NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY from the EDITOR Photo Ark

Home , Massacre Canyon, The Photo Ark

Urban Parks Watch ‘Faces of Death’ The Science of Death Sunday, April 3, on the National COMING BACK FROM THE BEYOND 93 Spring Days Geographic Channel APRIL 2016

PhotoThe Ark

One man’s quest to document the world’s animals, one picture at a time

april 2016 • vol. 229 • no. 4

Urban Parks Watch ‘Faces of Death’ Urban Parks Watch ‘Faces of Death’ Urban Parks Watch ‘Faces of Death’ Urban Parks Watch ‘Faces of Death’ Urban Parks Watch ‘Faces of Death’ The Science of Death Sunday, April 3, The Science of Death Sunday, April 3, The Science of Death Sunday, April 3, The Science of Death Sunday, April 3, The Science of Death Sunday, April 3, on the National on the National on the National on the National on the National COMING BACK FROM THE BEYOND 93 Spring Days Geographic Channel COMING BACK FROM THE BEYOND 93 Spring Days Geographic Channel COMING BACK FROM THE BEYOND 93 Spring Days Geographic Channel COMING BACK FROM THE BEYOND 93 Spring Days Geographic Channel COMING BACK FROM THE BEYOND 93 Spring Days Geographic Channel APRIL 2016 APRIL 2016 APRIL 2016 APRIL 2016 APRIL 2016

The Photo Ark One man’s quest to document the world’s animals, one picture at a time The The Photo Ark Photo The Photo Ark One man’s quest to document the world’s animals, One man’s quest to document the world’s animals, Ark one picture at a time one picture at a time One man’s quest The Photo Ark to document the world’s animals, One man’s quest to document the world’s animals, one picture at a time one picture at a time

The Photo The Ark Photo One man’s Ark quest to One man’s document quest to the world’s document animals, the world’s one picture animals, at a time one picture at a time The The Photo The Photo Ark Photo Ark One man’s quest to document the world’s animals, one picture at a time Ark One man’s quest to document the world’s animals, One man’s quest to document the world’s animals, one picture at a time one picture at a time

With so many Photo Ark animals to choose from, we couldn’t decide on one cover—so we made ten for this month’s issue. If you didn’t get the animal that you like best on your cover, call 1-800-777-2800 to purchase your favorite. Top row, from left: waxy monkey tree frog, hippopotamus, Reimann’s snake-necked turtle, snowy owl, Malayan tiger. Bottom row, from left: Brazilian porcupine, southern three-banded armadillo, Indian peafowl, mother and baby koalas, Coquerel’s sifaka.

70 Every Last One Photographing thousands of animals to help ensure that species are preserved: That’s the Photo Ark project. By Rachel Hartigan Shea Photographs by Joel Sartore

30 53 86 108 The Crossing Where Death Doesn’t Urban Parks Ghost Lands Is death an event or Mean Goodbye When you’re there, The Out of Eden Walk more of a progression? These Indonesian civilization can feel very passes through nations Science and human ex- villagers keep their far away—even if it’s all haunted by their history: perience offer answers. late loved ones close. around. Welcome to the Armenia and Turkey. By Robin Marantz Henig Literally. world’s urban parks. By Paul Salopek Photographs by Lynn Johnson By Amanda Bennett By Ken Otterbourg Photographs by Photographs by Brian Lehmann Photographs by Simon Roberts John Stanmeyer

132 Proof | 93 Days of Spring On the Cover Joel Sartore shot this month’s cover images at (from left, With an image a day, a Minnesota photographer by row) Rolling Hills Zoo, San Antonio Zoo, Zoo Atlanta, Raptor Recovery welcomes the season to his state. Nebraska, Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo, Saint Louis Zoo, Lincoln Children’s Zoo (two), Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital, Houston Zoo. Story and Photographs by Jim Brandenburg Corrections and Clariﬁcations Go to ngm.com/more.

OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY FROM THE EDITOR Photo Ark

Capturing Rare Species And to think it all started with a naked mole rat. The year was 2006, and National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore wanted to try making formal portraits of animals in captivity instead of his usual shots of them in the wild. For his first subject, he told a zookeeper, he just needed a creature that might sit still. The naked mole rat qualified. From that modest beginning came Photo Ark, a joint project of Sartore and Na- tional Geographic. Within a 25-year span, Sartore aims to document as many of the species of animals now living in captivity as possible. Why? Because by 2100, many of those species could be gone. Some of the animals he’s photographed may have already become extinct: A fish called the chucky madtom hasn’t been seen in the wild for more than a decade. Then there are others like the northern white rhino. Only three remain—destined for extinction. Sartore travels the world from his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, to take these animals’ portraits. His days on the road are often long—12 hours or more—and challenging. Animals can be uncooperative subjects, and the work far from glamorous. At the Plzeň Zoo in the Czech Republic, Sartore slept in a room above the rhino enclosure. The female rhino banged her horn on the bars all night (it sounded like “a machine gun”), and the odor of rhino urine was nearly overwhelming. But the price (free) was right. Joel Sartore’s The results are incomparable—so irresistible, in fact, that we couldn’t pick a single book Photo Ark: photo for our cover. Instead we printed ten covers, each with a diferent photo; you A World Worth Saving can be can see them on the contents page. Sartore’s soulful portraits have been projected ordered at shopng in heroic scale on the facades of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and the United .com/photoark. Nations building in New York City. They’ll soon be collected in a digital encyclopedia on nationalgeographic.com, as well as a gorgeous cofee-table book. They appear in a What animal is National Geographic book for kids of all ages (right) and regularly in this magazine. most like you? Which brings us back to the naked mole rat, a decidedly appearance-challenged ro- Take the quiz dent pictured on page 75. Ultimately, Sartore says, “I want to get people to care, to fall at natgeo.com/ photo-ark-quiz, in love, and to take action.” That’s a good description of the mission of Photo Ark—and and tell us about of National Geographic as well. Thanks for reading. it. #PhotoArk

Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief

This baby chimpanzee was photographed at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo.

PHOTO: JOEL SARTORE

We believe in the power of science, exploration, and storytelling to change the world.

EDITOR IN CHIEF Susan Goldberg NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

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national geographic • april 2016

3 Questions nationalgeographic.com/3Q

Why I Went Looking for Spiritual Answers

Morgan Freeman is an actor and director who has famously voiced the Almighty. Now he’s asking big cosmological questions— How did we get here? What happens when we die?—for The Story of God, a new series on the National Geographic Channel. The quest for answers took Freeman, 78, to hallowed sites around the globe, from a Maya temple to the Vatican.

Did you come to this project with a curiosity about God and faith that you wanted to explore? Well, I think I’m like most people who grow up with God. My grandmother was not religious, but she was a studious believer. She’d go to church because she was tired; she was a seamstress. You know how you say to children that God is love? Well, by the age of 13, I was beginning to question all that. The questioning is ongoing. This series was an opportunity to really delve into it, to go ﬁnd some answers.

Some people picture God as you, after you played God in the movie Bruce Almighty. Who do you see? Me? You know that George Burns also played God. [Laughs] I don’t think there is an image of God. I like the idea of rays coming down from the clouds. I like the idea of seeing the Milky Way on a clear and starry night or under a full moon. That is the essence of existence. You’re there totally with the great unknown. That’s God.

How was it to visit these holy, heavily guarded places? It wasn’t bad, except maybe on one occasion at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. We got kicked out because I’ve got a big mouth—because I used an unallowable word, which we didn’t realize was unallowable. We were in one of the tombs below where the Cruciﬁxion of Jesus took place. I used the term “myth” in regard to what happened there, and we were asked to leave posthaste. Out. But we were allowed back in the next day.

Watch the six-part Story of God With Morgan Freeman on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET, starting April 3 on the National Geographic Channel.

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Kenya At a hotel in the suburbs of Nairobi, a Roth- schild’s giraffe named Lynne spots an offer she can’t refuse: pellets of bran and molasses in the hand of Sala Carr-Hartley, age six. The 140-acre site is a sanctuary for the endangered subspecies.

PHOTO: ROBIN MOORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

national geographic • April 2016

India In the tall grass of West Bengal, a man in the vivid guise of a Hindu deity performs a Chhau dance—a martial mix of folk, tribal, and religious elements. These the- atrical dances, staged at festivals in eastern India, reenact scenes from Sanskrit epics.

PHOTO: ARGHYA CHATTERJEE

United States Moments after a recital, seven ballerinas relax backstage at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg, Florida. Most of the four- and ive-year-old girls, who had just portrayed fairies onstage, were wearing makeup for the irst time.

PHOTO: EVELYN REINSON

O Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com.

VISIONS YourShot.ngm.com From Above Assignment “Point downward” was the only rule we gave Your Shot members. See their work in each issue of the magazine and online every day.

EDITOR’S NOTE Christian Åslund Stockholm, Sweden There aren’t many tall buildings ‘ Taking the bird’s-eye view—which is usually where Åslund grew up, so when he part of the story—and making it the whole visited a friend’s high-rise apartment in Hong Kong, the view downward story can refresh your work. There’s power inspired an idea. On the roof Åslund in seeing something in an entirely new way.’ used a walkie-talkie to direct a friend lying on the street. They spent two Marie McGrory, Your Shot photo editor days shooting similar images. WHAT AGE SHOULD YOU START SAVING FOR RETIREMENT?

WHAT AGE DID YOU ACTUALLY START?

The difference between those two ages is what’s known as the “Action Gap,” and it has a bigger effect than you might think.

To better understand the impact, we performed a simple experiment. We asked a group of young people to use paint rollers to show us what age they think they should start saving. Then we asked a group of older people to indicate what age they actually did start. What we found was that there was often a years-long Action Gap between the two. But closing it up by even just a few years makes a huge difference in how much people can save over the long run. Which makes right now the perfect time to get better prepared for your retirement.

SPEAK TO A FINANCIAL ADVISOR TODAY, OR VISIT RACEFORRETIREMENT.COM

RETIREMENT | INVESTMENTS | INSURANCE

CANADA SWEDEN NORWAY FINLAND IRELAND U.K. POLAND ESTONIA UNITED STATES DENMARK LATVIA 4 million births NETHERLANDS LITHUANIA 32.8% cesarean BELGIUM BELARUS LUXEMBOURG UKRAINE BAHAMAS GERMANY MOLDOVA CZECH REPUBLIC CUBA HUNGARY DOMINICAN PORTUGAL SPAIN FRANCE MEXICO JAMAICA ROMANIA REPUBLIC ITALY HAITI 0.2 million SWITZERLAND SERBIA BELIZE 56.4% AUSTRIA BULGARIA SLOVENIA MACEDONIA GUATEMALA SLOVAKIA GREECE HONDURAS CROATIA EL SALVADOR BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA CYPRUS NICARAGUA MONTENEGRO ALBANIA COSTA RICA PANAMA TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO COLOMBIA VENEZUELA TUNISIA DJIBOUTI GUYANA ECUADOR SURINAME ERITREA MOROCCO BRAZIL LIBYA 3 million ALGERIA EGYPT PERU MAURITANIA NIGER 55.6% 2.5 million BURKINA FASO MALI 51.8% BOLIVIA SENEGAL CHAD URUGUAY CABO GAMBIA CHILE PARAGUAY VERDE GUINEA NIGERIA ETHIOPIA 7.1 million SUDAN ARGENTINA GUINEA-BISSAU GHANA 2.0% SIERRA LEONE SOUTH SUDAN LIBERIA TOGO BENIN SOMALIA CÔTE CENTRAL AFRICAN UGANDA D'IVOIRE REPUBLIC KENYA (IVORY COAST) CAMEROON

RWANDA EQUATORIAL GUINEA DEM. REP. OF GABON THE CONGO BURUNDI SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE CONGO

TANZANIA ANGOLA ZAMBIA MALAWI What these circles and colors mean Size indicates each country’s total number of births annually. NAMIBIA Color indicates the rate of babies delivered by C-section.* COMOROS BOTSWANA MADAGASCAR ZIMBABWE Percentage of births by cesarean section SOUTH MOZAMBIQUE AFRICA SWAZILAND LESOTHO 0 2030405060 No MAURITIUS 10% data The World Health Organization associates a C-section rate of 10% with preventing the deaths of mothers and newborns. *Countries with more than 5,000 births a year shown

national geographic • APRIL 2016 BRAZIL FINLAND EGYPT AFRICAN NATIONS The country with one of The lowest rate among Its rate (51.8%) is growing Less than 1.6% of babies in the highest C-section rates developed countries fast, as more women ask Niger, Chad, and Ethiopia (55.6%) launched a public (14.7%) is likely a product of for C-sections and doctors are delivered via C-section, health campaign in 2015 to midwife-led deliveries and try to avoid medical and largely owing to a shortage promote natural births. strict clinical protocols. legal complications. of care facilities.

KAZAKHSTAN RUSSIA MONGOLIA

KYRGYZSTAN GEORGIA

TURKEY ARMENIA UZBEKISTAN AZERBAIJAN TURKMENISTAN NORTH KOREA SYRIA AFGHANISTAN TAJIKISTAN CHINA 16.6 million SOUTH KOREA LEBANON 27.2% cesarean JORDAN IRAQ IRAN

ISRAEL JAPAN KUWAIT PAKISTAN SAUDI BAHRAIN ARABIA QATAR U.A.E. BHUTAN YEMEN OMAN NEPAL

MYANMAR (BURMA) BANGLADESH LAOS

VIETNAM

INDIA THAILAND 25 million births CAMBODIA PHILIPPINES 8.2% BRUNEI MALAYSIA

SINGAPORE

PAPUA NEW GUINEA INDONESIA MALDIVES SOLOMON SRI LANKA ISLANDS VANUATU FIJI TIMOR-LESTE (EAST TIMOR) AUSTRALIA NEW How the World Gives Birth ZEALAND In 2014 nearly one in ive pregnant women worldwide delivered babies by cesarean section. The original purpose of the procedure, in which the baby is removed through the uterus and abdomen, was to avoid life-threatening complications that can arise during vaginal births. Yet rates of C-sections in some countries are substantially higher than the 10 percent rate the World Health Organization associates with preventing the deaths of mothers and newborns. Why do some countries see so many C-sections? WHO medical oficer Ana Pilar Betrán says factors favoring the procedure include families’ and doctors’ expectations of achieving safer outcomes and avoiding long or painful labors. High rates, such as in Brazil, also can reect a desire to time births more predict- ably, while low rates can indicate reduced access to medical care. As doctors and expectant mothers reevaluate the beneits of delivering through the birth canal, C-section rates could decline, Betrán says. —Daniel Stone

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*Heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia.

What Is PRALUENT (alirocumab)? PRALUENT is an injectable prescription medicine you have any symptoms of an allergic reaction, called a PCSK9 inhibitor. PRALUENT is used along including a severe rash, redness, severe itching, with diet and maximally tolerated statin therapy in a swollen face, or trouble breathing. adults with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (an inherited condition that causes high levels of LDL) The most common side ef ects of PRALUENT or atherosclerotic heart problems, who need additional include: redness, itching, swelling, or pain/tenderness lowering of LDL cholesterol. at the injection site; symptoms of the common cold; and ﬂ u or ﬂ u-like symptoms. Tell your healthcare The ef ect of PRALUENT on heart problems such provider if you have any side ef ect that bothers you as heart attacks, stroke, or death is not known. or that does not go away.

Safety and e cacy in children is unknown. Talk to your healthcare provider about the right way to prepare and give yourself a PRALUENT Important Safety Information for PRALUENT injection and follow the “Instructions for Use” that Do not use PRALUENT if you are allergic to alirocumab comes with PRALUENT. or to any of the ingredients in PRALUENT. You are encouraged to report negative side Before starting PRALUENT, tell your healthcare ef ects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit provider about all your medical conditions, including www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. allergies, and if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant or if you are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed.

Tell your healthcare provider or pharmacist about any prescription and over-the-counter medicines you are taking or plan to take, including natural or herbal remedies.

PRALUENT can cause serious side ef ects, including allergic reactions that can be severe and require treatment in a hospital. Call your healthcare provider or go to the nearest emergency room right away if Summary of Information about Rx Only PRALUENT® (alirocumab) (PRAHL-u-ent) Injection, for Subcutaneous Injection

What is PRALUENT? PRALUENT is an injectable prescription medicine called a PCSK9 inhibitor. PRALUENT is used along with diet and maximally tolerated statin therapy in adults with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (an inherited condition that causes high levels of LDL) or atherosclerotic heart problems, who need additional lowering of LDL cholesterol. The effect of PRALUENT on heart problems such as heart attacks, stroke, or death is not known. It is not known if PRALUENT is safe and effective in children.

Who should not use PRALUENT? Do not use PRALUENT if you are allergic to alirocumab or to any of the ingredients in PRALUENT. See the end of this Summary of Information for a complete list of ingredients in PRALUENT.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before using PRALUENT? Before you start using PRALUENT, tell your healthcare provider about all your medical conditions, including allergies, and if you: • are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if PRALUENT will harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking PRALUENT. • are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. You and your healthcare provider should decide if you will take PRALUENT or breastfeed. You should not do both without talking to your healthcare provider ﬁrst.

Tell your healthcare provider or pharmacist about any prescription and over-the-counter medicines you are taking or plan to take, including natural or herbal remedies.

How should I use PRALUENT? • See the detailed ″Instructions for Use″ that comes with Praluent about the right way to prepare and give your PRALUENT injections. • Use PRALUENT exactly as your healthcare provider tells you to use it. • PRALUENT comes as a single-dose (1 time) pre-ﬁlled pen (autoinjector), or as a single-dose pre-ﬁlled syringe. Your healthcare provider will prescribe the type and dose that is best for you. • If your healthcare provider decides that you or a caregiver can give the injections of PRALUENT, you or your caregiver should receive training on the right way to prepare and administer PRALUENT. Do not try to inject PRALUENT until you have been shown the right way by your healthcare provider or nurse. • PRALUENT is given as an injection under the skin (subcutaneously) 1 time every 2 weeks. • Do not inject PRALUENT together with other injectable medicines at the same injection site. • Always check the label of your pen or syringe to make sure you have the correct medicine and the correct dose of PRALUENT before each injection. • If you forget to use PRALUENT or are not able to take the dose at your regular time, inject your missed dose as soon as you remember, within 7 days of your missed dose. Then, take your next dose 2 weeks from the day you missed your dose. This will put you back on your original schedule. If the missed dose is not given within 7 days, wait until your next scheduled dose to re-start PRALUENT. This will keep you on your original schedule. If you are not sure when to re-start PRALUENT, ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist. • If you use more PRALUENT than you should, talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist. • Do not stop using PRALUENT without talking with your healthcare provider. If you stop using PRALUENT, your cholesterol levels can increase.

What are the possible side effects of PRALUENT? PRALUENT can cause serious side effects, including: • allergic reactions. PRALUENT may cause allergic reactions that can be severe and require treatment in a hospital. Call your healthcare provider or go to the nearest hospital emergency room right away if you have any symptoms of an allergic reaction including a severe rash, redness, severe itching, a swollen face, or trouble breathing. The most common side effects of PRALUENT include: redness, itching, swelling, or pain/tenderness at the injection site, symptoms of the common cold, and ﬂu or ﬂu-like symptoms. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away. These are not all of the possible side effects of PRALUENT. Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for more information. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.

General information about the safe and effective use of PRALUENT. Medicines are sometimes prescribed for purposes other than those listed in a Patient Information leaﬂet. Do not use PRALUENT for a condition for which it was not prescribed. Do not give PRALUENT to other people, even if they have the same symptoms that you have. It may harm them. This is a summary of the most important information about PRALUENT. If you would like more information, talk with your healthcare provider.You can ask your pharmacist or healthcare provider for information about PRALUENT that is written for health professionals. For more information about PRALUENT, go to www.PRALUENT.com or call 1-844-PRALUENT (1-844-772-5836).

What are the ingredients in PRALUENT?

• Active ingredient: alirocumab • Inactive ingredients: histidine, polysorbate 20, sucrose, and water for injection.

Manufactured by: sanofi-aventis U.S. LLC Bridgewater, NJ 08807; A SANOFI COMPANY, U.S. License # 1752; Marketed by sanofi-aventis U.S. LLC, (NJ 08807) and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NY 10591) / PRALUENT is a registered trademark of Sanofi / ©2015 Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. / sanofi-aventis U.S. LLC

Revised: October 2015

ALI-PPI-NG-OCT15 EXPLORE Wild Things

A Plant T h a t P r e y s The secret life of plants can be deadly—and more eficient than is immediately apparent. As University of Bristol biologist Ulrike Bauer and her colleagues recently found, a curvaceous, nectar- producing tropical pitcher plant known as Nepenthes (left) makes a good living working only part-time. How does it do it? By ex- ploiting weather uctuations. The dry pitcher rim provides a safe foothold for ants seeking nectar (below). When the scout returns to its colony and shares the sweet news, ants stream to the source. But the tropical climate ensures that Nepenthes’s surface will soon become wet and slick— an inescapable death trap. Danger messages don’t reach the colony immediately, so the plant can enjoy a long buffet before the ant march ends. But there’s a catch: The strategy works only for plants with a taste for social insects, like ants. —Lindsay N. Smith

PHOTOS: CHRISTIAN ZIEGLER Wonders of the National Parks: A Geology of North America Taught by Ford Cochran TIME NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ED O T FF LECTURE TITLES I E IM R L 1. Yellowstone: Microcosm of the National Parks 2. Yellowstone’s Cataclysmic Origins and Future 70% 3. Grand Teton and Jackson Hole 4. Hawaii Volcanoes: Earth’s Largest Mountains O off 8 5. The Hawaiian Islands and Maui’s Haleakala R 2 D L 6. Mount Saint Helens, Lassen Volcanic, Rainier E RI R BY AP 7. Crater Lake, Olympic, North Cascades 8. Volcanoes of Alaska: Katmai and Lake Clark 9. Alaska’s Glacier Bay and Kenai Fjords 10. Yosemite: Nature’s Cathedral 11. Redwoods, Sequoias, and the Sierra Nevada 12. Pinnacles to Joshua Tree: The San Andreas 13. Denali to Gates of the Arctic 14. Death Valley and Great Basin: The Rift Zone 15. Shenandoah: The Collision of Old Continents 16. Great Smoky Mountains and Hot Springs 17. National Rivers: Gorges, Falls, and Meanders 18. Great Dune Fields of North America 19. National Seashores and Lakeshores 20. Reefs: Virgin Islands, Florida, Texas 21. National Marine Sanctuaries and Monuments 22. Acadia’s Highlands and Islands 23. The Dakota Badlands 24. The Grand Canyon’s 2-Billion-Year Staircase 25. Carving the Grand Canyon 26. Petriﬁ ed Forest and Other Fossil Parks 27. Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Arches 28. Zion, Gunnison’s Black Canyon, Capitol Reef 29. Mesa Verde and Ancient Settlements 30. The Colorado Rocky Mountains 31. Montana’s Glacier and the Canadian Rockies 32. Big Bend on the Rio Grande and Saguaro 33. Mammoth Cave, Wind Cave, Carlsbad Caverns Explore the Natural Wonder 34. The Everglades and the Congaree Bottomland 35. Voyageurs, Isle Royale, the Canadian Shield of Our National Parks 36. Assembling North America, Park by Park Drawing millions of tourists each year, our national parks capture a special place in our hearts—and in the history of how the planet Wonders of the National Parks: came to be the shape it is now. Most visitors get only a superficial A Geology of North America view of these sites. For anyone who loves history, geology, and Course no. 1707 | 36 lectures (30 minutes/lecture) nature, that is barely the tip of the mile-high glacier. No one knows the national parks better than National Geographic, SAVE $270 and we are proud to join forces with this extraordinary institution to present Wonders of the National Parks: A Geology of North America, providing in-depth insights, intriguing perspectives, and riveting little-known facts about these magnificent locations. +$15 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee Beautifully illustrated, these 36 half-hour lectures take you to more Priority Code: 126409 than a hundred spectacular sites guided by geologist and former college professor Ford Cochran, who is currently the Director of For over 25 years, The Great Courses has Programming for National Geographic Expeditions. You’ll finish brought the world’s foremost educators to millions who want to go deeper this course with a deep appreciation for each of our national parks into the subjects that matter most. No that you won’t find by just driving through them. exams. No homework. Just a world of knowledge available anytime, anywhere. Of er expires 04/28/16 Download or stream to your laptop or THEGREATCOURSES.CO/4NG PC, or use our free mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, or Android. Over 550 courses 1-800-832-2412 available at www.TheGreatCourses.com. EXPLORE Us

A king without a kingdom is not without options. For centuries, wannabe rulers Declaring intent on independence, political subversion, religious freedom, or just a laugh have laid dubious claim to territories. Some call these domains “micronations.” Their Own Where have self-appointed rulers planted ags? On islands: Off Denmark’s coast is the Kingdom of Elleore, which bans Robinson Crusoe as slander Kingdoms against island life. In deserts: Nevada’s Republic of Molossia sells bonds to fund its war—with East Germany. And in the ocean: The ruler of the Principality of Sea- land, a WWII-era British Navy sea fort, says he once foiled a hostage-taking coup. By international law, those aspiring to nationhood must have a government, a permanent population, deined territory, and a capacity for foreign relations; some tiny nations also have ags, constitutions, and currencies. What most don’t have is recognition. They exist, as their founders do, on the fringes. —Nina Strochlic national geographic • April 2016 A. ELLEORE A C For one festive week a year, 271 Elleorians ock to their island kingdom. It was founded in 1944 by a group of school- teachers now known as the “Immortals.”

B. SAUGEAIS According to lore, this republic struck out from France in 1947 when a restau- rateur jokingly asked a local oficial to show his entry permit before dining.

C. MOLOSSIA President Kevin Baugh’s War Depart- ment scrapped plans for an army and air force but does have D a ive-raft navy that “stands ready”—in the Nevada desert.

D. SEBORGA Residents of this medieval principality believe independence was granted in A.D. 954. Italy isn’t con- vinced, but Seborga operates consulates in 19 countries.

E. ATLANTIUM None of its 3,000 citizens actually re- side in the 200-acre Australian realm, but Emperor George II rents out the whole thing—pyramid included—on Airbnb.

C E

PHOTOS: LÉO DELAFONTAINE (A, B, C, D); REPUBLIC OF MOLOSSIA (CURRENCY); EMPIRE OF ATLANTIUM (STAMPS) EXPLORE Ancient Worlds

More than 20 million years ago a salamander hatchling less than three-quarters A Victim of an inch long met a traumatic end. A hungry predator—perhaps a spider or bird or snake—ripped off its left front leg, leaving the stub of a bone jutting from T r a p p e d its side. The salamander managed to escape but then must have fallen into a pool of tree resin, which preserved the tiny amphibian as it hardened into amber. in Amber George Poinar, Jr., a biologist at Oregon State University who specializes in amber, believes he collected this specimen in the Dominican Republic years ago without realizing that it was unique. When he examined it recently, he was astounded to see the salamander—the irst such creature ever found in amber and the only one, extinct or living, known to come from the Caribbean. It has since been identiied as a new genus, based on visible physical features such as the large webbed front and back feet. “This shows,” says Poinar, “that just because we haven’t found something in a particular area doesn’t mean it didn’t exist there millions of years ago.” —A. R. Williams

3,800-YEAR-OLD OFFERING FROM PERU A trio of painted, unfired-clay figurines has come to light at the coastal site of Vichama in what is now Peru. The three may represent powerful people in an ofshoot of the ancient Caral culture. The largest, almost nine inches tall, may portray a priestess. A male with long, blond hair and another female could be political leaders. All were found facing each other in two nested baskets. The figurines were likely deposited as ritual oferings before the construction of a building. Archaeologists believe the female figures attest to the power women wielded as their city struggled to survive a long drought. —ARW

PHOTOS: GEORGE POINAR JR. (TOP); CARAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL ZONE, MINISTRY OF CULTURE, PERU WHAT’S NEXT With available technology like Toyota Safety Sense™ P1 and Intelligent Clearance Sonar,2 the 2016 Prius is designed to help keep you safe in an unpredictable world. Intelligent technology is what’s next. toyota.com/prius Prototype shown with options. Production model may vary. 1Drivers should always be responsible for their own safe driving. Please always pay attention to your surroundings and drive safely. Depending on the conditions of roads, vehicles, weather, etc., the system(s) may not work as intended. Please see your Owner’s Manual for further details. 2Intelligent Clearance Sonar (ICS) is designed to assist drivers in avoiding potential collisions at speeds of 9 mph or less. Certain vehicle and environmental conditions, including an object’s shape and composition, may affect the ability of the ICS to detect it. Always look around outside the vehicle and use mirrors to confirm clearance. See Owner’s Manual for details. ©2015 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. EXPLORE Science

2 Powered by the current of the Jones Falls River, a wheel cranks the conveyor belt. Backup solar panels can keep the wheel moving when the current is slow. Solar panels

The wheel’s speed can be controlled via the Internet; remote monitoring also indi- Dumpsters cates when Dumpsters need to be swapped out.

Waterwheel

Rotating forks Conveyor belt

3 River trash tumbles into a Dumpster. When the container is full, a boat tows it to a transit station. Containment booms 1 Floating booms funnel The largest amounts of trash toward rotating trash are collected from the forks, which lift the refuse strong currents following a onto a conveyor belt. heavy rain or storm.

As the Trash Turns The rising star of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, known to locals as JONES FALLS RIVER Mr. Trash Wheel, is a garbage gobbler with its own social media WATERSHED following. “It’s sort of a cross between a spaceship and a covered wagon,” says its creator, John Kellett, the former museum

J o BALTIMORE director who sketched the contraption’s design on a napkin. n CITY LIMIT e s

Built with $720,000 in public and private funds, the voracious F a l device illed 12 Dumpsters with trash in the 48 hours after a ls Baltimore particularly heavy storm last year. Since its debut in 2014, it has MD. U.S. pulled in some 354 tons of trash. The Waterfront Partnership Inner Harbor of Baltimore owns the wheel and makes a detailed tally of its

P intake—which as of last December included 176,589 chip bags a ta p and nearly seven million cigarette butts. s co R Dozens of countries have asked for help in creating their own i ve wheels, says Kellett. Among them: India, for its garbage-laden The Jones Falls River watershed r covers 58 square miles. Its 0 mi 4 Ganges River, and Brazil, which will host Olympic events this currents carry the majority of the year in Rio de Janeiro’s trashy Guanabara Bay. —Eve Conant trash found in the Baltimore Harbor. 0 km 4

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A Settlement has been Proposed in a Grand Canyon National Park Class Action Lawsuit that Alleges Safety Defects in

Yosemite Taurus Pistols National Park PLEASE READ Important Information Concerning Your Options Para una notificación en Español, visitar www.TaurusCarterSettlement.com Bow River Float, Banff Yellowstone WHAT’S THIS ABOUT? National Park, Canada National Park A class action settlement of a lawsuit alleging safety defects in certain Taurus pistols has been Come Explore Your National Parks with Caravan proposed. The lawsuit claims “Class Pistols” may unintentionally fire with the safety in the “on” or “safe” position, and may unintentionally fire when dropped or bumped. Taurus denies all Visit America’s allegations of wrongdoing and liability. WHO’S INCLUDED? You may be a Class Member if you are a resident National Parks or entity of the U.S., Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, or Guam and own at least one “Class Caravan Tours Pistol” (these include PT, Millennium, and 24/7 models; see the website for a complete 8 to 10 Day Guided Vacations listing) on July 30, 2015. The settlement doesn’t include Taurus G2 model pistols. Caravan makes it so easy–and so affordable–for WHAT ARE THE SETTLEMENT BENEFITS? you to visit America’s greatest national parks. Caravan’s quality tours feature complete sightseeing, Taurus will provide a free, transferable lifetime enhanced warranty benefit. professional Tour Directors and great itineraries, operated by one of the country’s oldest and most Taurus will pay shipping and inspection costs and repair or replace the pistol, with respected guided tour companies. no requirement that the owner prove the alleged safety defects. No repair is currently You can trust Caravan’s 64 years of experience available, so pistols returned under this option with tours of quality and value. Join the smart will be replaced with a comparable Taurus G2 (or similar) model pistol at this time. You can shoppers and experienced travelers who rely on receive a replacement only if applicable law Caravan to handle all the details while you & your permits the shipping of a replacement pistol to your state (visit the website for details). If family enjoy a well-earned, worry-free vacation. Taurus develops a repair, it can repair rather than replace Class Pistols. Taurus will also Two nights each in the Grand Canyon and provide safety training videos to all Settlement “ Class Members. Zion were superb ” —Client, Annandale, VA Settlement Class Members who want a cash payment may return their Class Pistol to Guided Vacations Since 1952. tax & fees extra Taurus (with shipping paid by Taurus). Guatemala, Antigua & Tikal 10 days $1295 They will receive up to $200 per pistol, depending on the total number returned. Total Costa Rica Natural Paradise 9 days $1195 cash payments will not exceed $30 million. If the Court approves the settlement and Panama Canal Cruise & Tour 8 days $1195 there are no appeals, the claims period for Nova Scotia & P.E.I. 10 days $1395 cash payments will run from approximately August 22, 2016 until December 20, 2016. • Canadian Rockies & Glacier 9 days $1595 WHAT ARE YOUR OTHER OPTIONS? • Grand Canyon, Bryce & Zion 8 days $1395 You can opt-out or object to the settlement, but must do so by May 18, 2016. If you do not • California Coast & Yosemite 8 days $1395 opt-out, you release Taurus from liability for • Mt. Rushmore & Yellowstone 8 days $1295 alleged design or manufacturing defects that may result in an unintended discharge. If you opt-out, New England & Fall Foliage 8 days $1295 you will not get a benefit from this settlement. The Court will hold a continued Final Approval Brilliant, Affordable Pricing AM hearing on July 18, 2016, to consider whether to “ ” ERICAS approve the settlement. —Arthur Frommer, Travel Editor This is a Supplemental Summary authorized by the Court. For detailed information, visit the website, call 1-844-528-0180, or write to Free 28-pg Brochure Taurus Class Action, c/o Heffler Claims Group, ᅧ P.O. Box 230, Philadelphia, PA 19107-0230. Caravan com 1-800-Caravan

www.TaurusCarterSettlement.com EXPLORE Field Notes National Geographic explorers, photographers, and writers report from around the world

how 21st-century infrastructure may afect China to Laos isolated groups like the Hmong, Hani, and Khmu, who all live in the Laotian highlands. The strenuous trip, nine weeks from be- Two muddy ginning to end, brought moments of cultural fascination, rumbling uncertainty (where to wheels in get the next meal?), and bike-seat discom- fort. Village elders and their families showed the path of a great hospitality to Hemes and his traveling companions. In Laos, Hemes saw friction future train between cultures embodied in a 15-year-old boy. The teen carried a cell phone and told KYLE HEMES Environmental scientist Hemes he aspired to be a teacher. But his family needed him to farm. Full of ambition, When Kyle Hemes began his the boy was clearly torn between conflicting 620-mile bike ride across ASIA responsibilities. —Daniel Stone parts of Laos and China, CHINA Kunming he wanted to physically Vientiane TAIWAN LAOS feel the friction of the ter- India rain. In northern Laos it’s this terrain—steep, forested, How genetically and largely impassable—that historically has separated upland people from lowland state Bikes could modified crops grow institutions. cover ground ANDREW FLACHS Anthropologist Soon that may change. China—continuing impassable for trucks. “It its campaign of railroad diplomacy with was the ter- Flachs describes his research: its neighbors—plans to build a high-speed rail rain, not the As a specialist in the an- line connecting Vientiane, Laos, to Kunming, distance, that ASIA challenged thropology of agriculture, INDIA China. Hemes, a National Geographic young ex- us,” says I’m familiar with the claim plorer, wanted to bike the route to understand Hemes. Telangana that genetically modified crops pose a threat to biodiversity. My question was whether the threat might come less from GM seeds than from the way GM plants often are farmed: as a single cash crop that’s un- diversified, leaving farms open to waves of disease and loss. There’s no place this would be more on display than India, an immense country with both the largest population of small farmers and the world’s largest cotton output. Supported by a National Geographic grant, I surveyed GM cotton farmers in India’s Telangana state. Farmers who grew genetically modified cotton with a built-in pesticide, also known as Bt cotton, showed me they didn’t just grow cotton. In parts of their fields where cotton wouldn’t grow, they grew other useful plants—an average of 16, some of them fruits and vegetables. For these farmers, the usual fears about

PHOTO: WILL STAUFFER-NORRIS. NGM MAPS LEAVE A LEGACY OF LOVE.

By including the National Geographic Society in your will, trust, or benei ciary designation, you can pass on your love of exploration, science, and conservation to future generations. h ese git s cost you nothing now and allow you to change your benei ciaries at any time.

I have included the National Geographicog p Name ______Society in my will, trust, or benei ciary Address ______designation. ______Please send me information about easy Phone ______ways to leave a legacy of exploration and conservation. Email ______I would like to speak to someone about Mail to National Geographic Society making a git . Please call me. O ce of Planned Giving 1145 17th Street N.W. You may also contact us at (800) 226-4438 Washington, D.C. 20036-4688 or at plannedgit [email protected], h e National Geographic Society is a 501(c)(3) organization. Our federal tax ID number is 53-0193519. 16PGFC04B EXPLORE To learn more about the ways National Geographic is funding Field Notes research and exploration, visit nationalgeographic.com/explorers.

monocropping didn’t seem to materialize. The frog on However, this crop variety did seem to open the left (R. imitator) has vulnerabilities elsewhere. GM cotton is still evolved to susceptible to some pests. They can be man- resemble the aged by spraying—which has consequences frog on the for food crops nearby. right (R. fan- tastica). The mimicry isn’t exact—just Peru close enough to warn predators away A loyal frog changes from both its stripes—and spots toxic species.

KYLE SUMMERS Biologist

Two traits make Ranitomeya imitator “really neat,” says PERU United States Kyle Summers, a biologist SOUTH at East Carolina University AMER. and a National Geograph- Using music as an ic grantee. “This is the only antidote to cancer frog that’s known to be monogamous.” And, he says, “it’s a mimic.” MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS Author Summers studies the poisonous frog in the rain forests of Peru, where it has evolved to Williams reports: I met Jedd match the coloration of other toxic frogs. That Wolchok at Memorial way, predators have to recognize only one kind Sloan Kettering Cancer N. U.S. AMER. of frog as too dangerous to eat. Summers and Center during the mela- New his colleagues have found four types of the noma clinical trial that York mimic poison frogs: spotted, striped, banded, saved my life. Although I’ve and orange-headed. They “look quite diferent known him for four years, I’ve from each other,” he says, “but similar to the never seen him like this before: his white lab species they co-occur with.” coat replaced by black-tie attire, his stetho- Research also has conﬁrmed that the frogs scope traded in for a tuba. are monogamous, Summers says. Lifelong My doctor, an award-winning oncologist, is bonded pairs work together to feed their tad- in a high school auditorium in New York City’s poles in the tiny pools of water that collect on Brooklyn borough today not to treat cancer but the leaves of tropical plants. Williams’s to make music. He’s part of the Brooklyn Wind To study the frogs, the scientists catch them new memoir Symphony, a volunteer group for dedicated— explores in plastic cups. They weigh them, measure her journey but not necessarily professional—musicians them, and take a small toe clip for genetic anal- through a who practice and perform together. ysis. Then they let the frogs go. “We put a little revolutionary “The day job can be stressful and emotionally clinical trial. bit of Neosporin on the toe,” says Summers, challenging,” Wolchok says. Making music “to keep it from getting infected.” with this group is “an opportunity to restore, Is the poison an issue for researchers? “We prevents burnout and compassion fatigue, handle the frogs with rubber gloves,” he says, and enhances the ability to focus on creative “but that’s mostly for the frogs.” solutions.” It’s beautiful to experience the kind As distasteful as the mimic poison frog may of art that can guide innovation—and the kind be to predators, it isn’t particularly toxic to of innovation that can save lives, like mine. humans. —Rachel Hartigan Shea Available at nationalgeographic.com/books

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HABITAT/RANGE Paciic Ocean off the Central American coast

CONSERVATION STATUS Not yet assessed

OTHER FACTS The larger Paciic striped octopus is known as a har- lequin for the patterns and colors seen on the female (at left) and her male partner.

In most octopus species it’s customary after sex for the female to make a Mating meal—of her partner. To avoid being eaten, the male typically “jumps on top of the female, they mate in a position where he’s as far from her mouth as possible, and when they’re done, the male runs away,” says marine biologist Beak Richard Ross of the California Academy of Sciences. That mating behavior was such accepted science that in 1982, when Panamanian marine biologist to Beak Arcadio Rodaniche reported finding an octopus that mated beak to beak and cohabited between sex acts, his research was dismissed or ignored. Some three decades later Ross and Roy Caldwell of the University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley, have bred and studied that elusive cephalopod, the larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO). They’ve confirmed what Rodaniche found— and more. LPSO mates will share dens and meals, whereas most octopuses are loners (if not cannibals). LPSOs mate as often as daily, and females lay eggs over months; in most other species, females die after raising one brood. And though most octopuses couple warily, at arm’s length, LPSOs mate with the beaks on their undersides pressed together, as if kissing (above). With all those revelations from just one species, imagine what’s still to be discovered. More than 300 octopus species are believed to inhabit Earth’s oceans, and many have never been studied. —Patricia Edmonds

PHOTO:PHOTO: ROY JOEL L. CALDWELL SARTORE

The Crossing

After toddler Gardell Martin fell into an icy stream in March 2015, he was dead for more than an hour and a half. Three and a half days later he left a hospital alive and well. His story is one of many prompting scientists to question the very meaning of death.

Linda Chamberlain, co-founder of the Arizona-based cryonics company Alcor, hugs the container where the body of her husband, Fred, is frozen in the hope that someday he can be thawed and revived. She plans to join him in cryo limbo when her time comes. Fred’s last words, she says, were “Gee, I hope this works.”

“My baby, my boy, has left such an impact,” says Deanna Santana of her son Scott, who died at 17 in a car crash and whose organs and tissues were transplanted into 76 people. Rod Gramson (at center), who received the heart, met Deanna and her hus - band, Rich, near the road in Placerville, California, where Scott died. By Robin Marantz Henig Photographs by Lynn Johnson

At first it seemed like nothing more than the worst headache she’d ever had. So Karla Pérez—22 years old, the mother of other words, it was dead—and a body that could three-year-old Genesis, and five months preg- be sustained mechanically, in this case for one nant—went into her mother’s room to lie down, reason only: to nurture her 22-week-old fe- hoping it would pass. But the pain got worse, tus until he was big enough to manage on his and as she vomited of the side of the bed, she own. This borderland is becoming increas- told her younger brother to call 911. ingly populated, as scientists explore how our It was not quite midnight on Sunday, Febru- existence is not a toggle—“on” for alive, “of” ary 8, 2015. The ambulance raced Pérez from for dead—but a dimmer switch that can move her home in Waterloo, Nebraska, to Methodist through various shades between white and Women’s Hospital in Omaha. She began to lose black. In the gray zone, death isn’t necessarily consciousness in the emergency room, and doc- permanent, life can be hard to define, and some tors put a tube down her throat to keep oxygen people cross over that great divide and return— flowing to her fetus. They ordered a CT scan, sometimes describing in precise detail what and there it was: a massive brain bleed creating they saw on the other side. severe pressure in her skull. Death is “a process, not a moment,” writes She had suffered a stroke, but amazingly critical-care physician Sam Parnia in his book her fetus was doing fine, the heartbeat strong Erasing Death. It’s a whole-body stroke, in and steady as if nothing were wrong. Neurol- which the heart stops beating but the organs ogists did another CT scan at about two in the don’t die immediately. In fact, he writes, they morning, and their worst fears were confirmed: might hang on intact for quite a while, which Pérez’s brain had become so swollen that the means that “for a significant period of time after whole brain stem had pushed out through a death, death is in fact fully reversible.” small opening at the base of her skull. How can death, the very essence of forever, be “When they saw that,” says Tifany Somer- reversible? What is the nature of consciousness Shely, the obstetrician who’d cared for Pérez during that transition through the gray zone? A through her pregnancy with Genesis and with growing number of scientists are wrestling with this baby too, “they knew for sure that it wasn’t such vexing questions. going to end well.” In Seattle biologist Mark Roth experiments Pérez had landed at the ragged border be- with putting animals into a chemically in- tween life and death, with a brain that had duced suspended animation, mixing up solu- ceased functioning and would never recover—in tions to lower heartbeat and metabolism to

36 national geographic • april 2016 near-hibernation levels. His goal is to make Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Ever human patients who are having heart attacks since oxygen was discovered in the early 1770s, “a little bit immortal” until they can get past the “scientists have recognized it as essential to medical crisis that brought them to the brink life,” he says. What the 18th-century scientists of death. didn’t know is that oxygen is essential to life in In Baltimore and Pittsburgh trauma teams a surprisingly nonbinary way. “Yes, if you take led by surgeon Sam Tisherman are conducting away oxygen, you can kill the animal,” Roth clinical trials in which gunshot and stabbing says. “But if you further reduce the oxygen, the victims have their body temperature lowered in animal is alive again, but it’s suspended.” order to slow bleeding long enough for surgeons He has shown that this works in soil nem- to close up their wounds. The medical teams are atodes, which are alive in air with as little as using supercooling to do what Roth wants to do 0.5 percent oxygen and are dead if you reduce with chemicals—kill their patients, temporarily, the oxygen to 0.1 percent. But if you then pro- in order to save their lives. ceed quickly to a much lower level of oxygen— In Arizona cryonics experts maintain more 0.001 percent or even less—the worms enter than 130 dead clients in a frozen state that’s a state of suspension where they need signiﬁ- another kind of limbo. Their hope is that some- cantly less oxygen to survive. It’s their way of time in the distant future, maybe centuries from preserving themselves during extreme depri- now, these clients will be thawed and revived, vation, a bit like animals hibernating in winter. technology having advanced to the point where These oxygen-starved, suspended organisms they can be cured of whatever killed them. appear to be dead but not permanently so, like In India neuroscientist Richard Davidson a gas cooktop with only the pilot light on. studies Buddhist monks in a state called thuk- Roth is trying to get to this pilot-light state dam, in which biological signs of life have ceased by infusing experimental animals with an “ele- yet the body appears fresh and intact for a week mental reducing agent,” such as iodide, that or more. Davidson’s goal is to see if he can de- greatly decreases their oxygen needs. Soon he’ll tect any brain activity in these monks, hoping try it in humans too. The goal is to minimize to learn what, if anything, happens to the mind the damage that can occur from treatments after circulation stops. after heart attacks. If iodide slows oxygen me- And in New York, Parnia spreads the gospel tabolism, the thinking is, it might help avoid of sustained resuscitation. He says CPR works the blowout injury that sometimes comes with better than people realize and that under prop- treatments like balloon angioplasty. At this lower conditions—when the body temperature is er setting the damaged heart can just sip the lowered, chest compression is regulated for oxygen coming in through the repaired vessel, depth and tempo, and oxygen is reintroduced rather than get ﬂooded by it. slowly to avoid injuring tissue—some patients Life and death are all about motion, ac- can be brought back from the dead after hours cording to Roth: In biology the less something without a heartbeat, often with no long-term moves, the longer it tends to live. Seeds and consequences. Now he’s investigating one of the spores can have life spans of hundreds of thou- most mysterious aspects of crossing over: why sands of years—in other words, they’re practi- so many people in cardiac arrest report out-of- cally immortal. Roth imagines a day when using body or near-death experiences, and what those sensations might reveal about the nature of this limbo zone and about death itself. Tune in Sunday, April 3, to National Oxygen plays a paradoxical role along the Geographic Channel’s Explorer series life-death border, according to Roth, of Seattle’s episode Faces of Death.

the crossing 37 Countdown to Irreversibility The brain has higher energy needs than other organs, so it is the irst to lose function—and suffer irreversible injury—when a person goes into cardiac arrest and blood stops circulating. Different regions of the brain have varying levels of susceptibility, beginning with one of the most fragile, the hippocampus.

TIME BEFORE PERMANENT DAMAGE OCCURS IN A BODY AT NORMAL TEMPERATURE 0 Brain 4-5 minutes

3 Basal ganglia

Heart and 4 Thalamus kidney 2 Cerebral 30 minutes cortex 1 Hippocampus

5 Brain stem

1 Liver 1-2 hours

STEPS TO BRAIN DEATH

1. Short-Term Memory 2 Lungs The memory-consolidating hippocampus is the 2-4 hours irst to fail. A person who regains consciousness will ind it hard to remember what just happened.

2. Cognitive Function Next, when the cerebral cortex, which controls executive and cognitive functions, is damaged, language and decision-making skills are lost.

3. Motor Function As the forebrain’s basal ganglia lose blood supply, movements of the limbs, eyes, and other body parts can no longer be controlled. 3

4. Senses When an oxygen-depleted thalamus can no longer send information to the cerebral cortex, the senses of sight, hearing, and touch start to fail.

5. Respiratory System As the brain stem, which regulates our respiratory and cardiovascular systems, dies, breathing and swallowing stop.

MONICA SERRANO AND DAISY CHUNG, NGM STAFF. RESEARCH: MEG ROOSEVELT 4 SOURCES: RAYMOND KOEHLER, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY; PEISHUN SHOU AND YUFANG SHI, hours SOOCHOW UNIVERSITY AND CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES an agent such as iodide, a technique that will to try to stimulate a cough. soon be studied in early clinical trials in Aus- It’s all quite straightforward, yet also coun- tralia, can give people that immortality “for a terintuitive. “Brain-dead patients do not ap- moment”—the moment they most need it, when pear dead,” wrote James Bernat, a neurologist their heart is in serious trouble. at Dartmouth’s medical school in New Hamp- shire, in the American Journal of Bioethics in Such an approach would not have helped 2014. “It is contrary to experience to call a pa- Pérez, whose heart never stopped beating. The tient dead who continues to have heartbeat, day after her devastating CT scan, her obstetri- circulation, and visceral organ functioning.” cian, Somer-Shely, tried to explain to Pérez’s His article, meant to clarify and defend the stunned and frightened parents, Berta and concept of brain death, appeared just as two Modesto Jimenez, that their beautiful daugh- controversial patients were making headlines: ter—the lively young woman with sparkly eyes Jahi McMath, a California teenager whose par- who adored her little girl, had a passel of friends, ents refused to accept the diagnosis after the and loved to dance—was brain-dead. girl experienced a catastrophic loss of oxygen There was a language barrier. The Jimenezes’ during a tonsillectomy, and Marlise Muñoz, a first language is Spanish, and everything the brain-dead pregnant woman whose case dif- doctor said had to be filtered through a trans- fered from Pérez’s in a significant way. Muñoz’s lator. But the real barrier wasn’t language. It family didn’t want anything done to sustain her was the concept of brain death itself. The term body, but hospital staf overruled them, because dates to the late 1960s, when two medical devel- they thought Texas law required them to keep opments coincided: high-tech, life-sustaining the fetus alive. (A judge eventually ruled against machinery, which blurred the border between the hospital.) life and death, and organ transplantation, Two days after Pérez’s stroke the Jimenez which made clarifying that border especially family, along with the father of the unborn baby urgent. No longer could death be defined in boy, found themselves in a crowded conference the traditional way, as cessation of breath and room at Methodist Hospital, still reeling from heartbeat, since ventilators could provide both the tragic twists of Pérez’s pregnancy. There to indefinitely. Is a patient on a ventilator dead or meet with them were 26 hospital staf mem- alive? If you remove the ventilator, when can bers, including neurologists, palliative-care you ethically retrieve the organs to transplant specialists, nurses, chaplains, ethicists, and into someone else? If a transplanted heart starts social workers. The parents listened intently beating again in a new chest, was the heart do- as the translator explained that the doctors’ nor really dead in the first place? tests had revealed their daughter’s lack of brain To address such thorny questions, a Harvard function. They heard the team ofer “somatic panel met in 1968 to define death in two ways: support” to Pérez until the fetus was at least the traditional way, by cardiopulmonary crite- 24 weeks old, which is when he would have a ria, and a new way, by neurological ones. The fifty-fifty chance of surviving outside the womb. neurological criteria, which are now used to de- If they were lucky, the doctors said, they could termine “brain death,” involved three cardinal keep Pérez’s body functioning even longer, benchmarks: coma or unresponsiveness, apnea improving the baby’s survival odds with each or the inability to breathe without a ventilator, passing week. and the absence of brain-stem reflexes, mea- Modesto Jimenez might have been think- sured by bedside exams such as flushing the ears ing of the conversation he’d had the night be- with cold water to see if the eyes move, poking fore with Somer-Shely—the only physician the nail bed to see if the face grimaces, or swab- in the hospital who’d known Pérez as a living, bing the throat and suctioning the bronchia breathing, laughing, loving person—when he’d

the crossing 39 “If I had listened to the doctors, I’d be visiting my daughter in the cemetery,” says Nailah Wink ﬁeld, whose daughter Jahi McMath was declared brain-dead in 2013, when she was 13. Winkﬁeld insists that her daughter is not dead. taken her aside and asked, “¿Será mi hija nunca despertar?” “No,” she’d said. “Your daughter probably will never wake up.” It was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to say. “In my clinical mind I knew that brain death is death,” she says. “Clinically speaking, she was dead at that point.” But seeing her patient lying there in the intensive care unit, Somer-Shely found that stark fact almost as diicult to believe as the family did. Pérez looked like someone who’d just come out of surgery: Her skin was warm, her chest was rising and falling, and in her belly a fetus was still moving about, ap- parently healthy. In the crowded conference room the Jime- nezes nodded gravely, telling the medical team that they understood their daughter was brain- dead and would never wake up. But, they add- ed, they would keep praying for un milagro—a miracle—just in case.

If a miracle is deﬁned as bringing someone back from the dead, sometimes that does happen in medicine. The Martin family believe they witnessed a miracle after their youngest son, Gardell, died last winter when he fell into an icy stream. He and his mother, father, and six older siblings live on a big rural property in central Pennsyl- vania that the kids love to explore. On a warm day in March 2015 two of the boys took Gardell, not quite two years old, out to play. The toddler lost his footing and fell into a stream about a hundred yards from his home. His brothers noticed that he was gone and were frantic when they couldn’t ﬁnd him. By the time emergency rescuers got to Gardell— who’d been pulled out of the water by a neighbor—the boy’s heart had stopped beating for at least 35 minutes. The EMTs began chest compression, but they couldn’t get his heart to start up again. They continued CPR as they sped the ten miles to Evangelical Community, the closest hospital. He had no heartbeat, and his body temperature was 77 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 20 degrees below normal. (Continued on page 48)

the crossing 41 A “spiritual cowboy” told her not to be afraid. Ashlee Barnett was a college student when she had a serious car crash on a remote Texas highway. Her pelvis was shattered, her spleen had ruptured, and she was bleeding profusely. At the scene, she says, she moved between two worlds: chaos and pain on one side, as paramedics wielded the jaws of life; and one with white light, no pain, and no fear. Several years later she developed cancer, but her near-death experience made her confident that she would live. She has three children and counsels trauma survivors. As he climbed the stairs to check on his family, his legs began to disappear. At a family picnic at upstate New York’s Sleepy Hollow Lake, Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon, had just tried to call his mother on the phone. An approaching storm sent a lightning bolt through the phone into his head, stopping his heart. Cicoria says he felt himself leave his body, moving through walls toward a blue-white light, eager to be one with God. He emerged from his near-death experience with a sudden passion for classical piano, creating melodies that seemed to download, unbidden, into his brain. He came to believe he’d been spared so that he could channel “the music from heaven.” She saw her grieving stepfather buy a candy bar. A head-on collision landed Tricia Barker, then a college student, in an Austin, Texas, hospital, bleeding profusely, her spine broken. She says she felt herself separate from her body during surgery, hovering near the ceiling as she watched her monitor flatline. Moving through the hospital corridor, she says, she saw her stepfather, struggling with grief, buy a candy bar from a vending machine; it was this detail, a stress-induced indulgence he’d told no one about, that made Barker believe her movements really happened. Now a creative writing professor, she says she’s still guided by the spirits that accompanied her on the other side. They prepped Gardell for a helicopter ride to up, they checked for a pulse one more time. Geisinger Medical Center, 18 miles away in Dan- Incredibly, there it was: a heartbeat, faint at ville. Still no heartbeat. first, but steady, without the rhythm abnormal- “He had no signs of life whatsoever,” recalls ities that sometimes appear after a prolonged Richard Lambert, director of pediatric sedation cardiac arrest. And just three and a half days service and a member of the pediatric critical- later Gardell left the hospital with his prayerful care team that awaited the helicopter. “He family, a little wobbly on his feet but otherwise looked like a child who was … Well, he was perfectly fine. dusky, dark colored. His lips were blue …” Lam bert’s voice trails off as he remembers Gardell is too young to tell us what it was that dreadful moment. He knew that children like during the 101 minutes he was dead. But who drown in ice water sometimes recover, but sometimes people who’ve been rescued, thanks he’d never known of one who’d been dead for as to persistent, high-quality resuscitation, come long as Gardell had. Even worse, the boy had a back with stories that are quite clear—and ee- shockingly low blood pH, a sign of imminent rily similar. These survivors can be thought of organ failure. as having crossed over to the other side and An emergency room resident turned to Lam- returned with stories that ofer some insight bert and his colleague Frank Mafei, director into how it feels to die. Their tales from the of pediatric critical care for Geisinger’s Janet gray zone have been the subject of some sci- Weis Children’s Hospital: Maybe it was time entific scrutiny, most recently in a study called to stop trying to revive the boy? Lambert and AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), Mafei both wanted to keep going. All the ele- led by Sam Parnia. Beginning in 2008, Parnia, ments were as favorable as they could be in a director of resuscitation research at Stony brink-of-death story. The water was cold, the Brook University, and his colleagues looked at child was young, and resuscitation eforts had 2,060 cases of cardiac arrest at 15 American, been started within minutes of the drowning British, and Austrian hospitals. Among them and had continued nonstop ever since. Let’s try were 330 survivors, 140 of whom were inter- just a little longer, they told the team. viewed. Fifty-five of the 140 patients said that So they continued. Another 10 minutes, during the time when they were being resusci- another 20 minutes, another 25. By this time tated, they perceived some kind of awareness. Gardell had been without pulse or breath for Though most couldn’t quite recall details, more than an hour and a half. He was “a flaccid, others mentioned sensations similar to those cold corpse showing no signs of life,” as Lam- found in best-selling books such as Heaven Is bert describes him. But team members kept for Real: time either speeding up or slowing pumping, pressing, monitoring. The ones do- down (27 people), peacefulness (22), separating chest compression rotated on and of every ing from their bodies (13), joy (9), or seeing a two minutes—it’s exhausting to keep doing it bright light or golden flash (7). Some (the exact right, even on a tiny chest—and others inserted number wasn’t specified) said they remem- catheters into his femoral vein, jugular vein, bered bad sensations: fear, drowning or being stomach, and bladder, infusing warm fluids to dragged through deep water, or in one case, gradually increase his body temperature. None seeing “men in coins being buried upright.” of it seemed to be making any diference. The study, Parnia and his co-authors wrote in Rather than call of the resuscitation entirely, the medical journal Resuscitation, provides Lambert and Mafei decided to bring Gardell into “further understanding of the broad mental surgery for a cardiopulmonary bypass—the most experience that likely accompanies death af- aggressive form of active rewarming, a last-ditch ter circulatory standstill.” They wrote that the efort to get his heart beating. After they scrubbed next step would be to study whether and how

48 national geographic • april 2016 these episodes—which most investigators call experiences,” he said, also contradicting Par- near-death experiences (NDEs), though Par- nia’s view of what had happened. “During nia prefers “actual death experiences”— afect these experiences the brain is very much alive survivors after recovery, either with positive and very much active.” He said that what Neal inﬂuences or negative ones, such as cognitive went through could have been a phenomenon problems and post-traumatic stress. What the called REM intrusion, when the same brain ac- AWARE team didn’t explore was a common af- tivity that characterizes dreaming somehow terefect of NDEs: a renewed sense of purpose gets turned on during other, nonsleep events, and meaning to one’s life. That’s the feeling you such as a sudden loss of oxygen. To him, near- often hear about from survivors—especially death and out-of-body experiences are the those who go on to write books about it. Mary result not of dying but of hypoxia—a loss of

Patients can be brought back from the dead after hours without a heartbeat, often with no long-term consequences.

Neal, an orthopedic surgeon from Wyoming, consciousness, not of life itself. mentioned that effect to a large audience at Other studies point to diferent physiolog- a 2013 New York Academy of Sciences panel ical explanations for NDEs. At the University discussion called Rethinking Mortality. Neal, of Michigan a team led by neuroscientist Jimo author of To Heaven and Back, described Borjigin measured brain waves in nine rats after drowning while kayaking in Chile 14 years ear- cardiac arrest. In all of them high-frequency lier. She said she could feel her spirit peeling gamma waves (the ones associated with med- away from her body and rising out of the riv- itation) became more intense after the heart er, as her knees bent backward, breaking her stopped—more coherent and organized, in fact, bones. She remembered walking down an “in- than they are during ordinary wakefulness. credibly beautiful pathway toward this great Maybe this is what NDEs are, the investigators domed structure that I knew was the point of no wrote, a “heightened conscious processing” that return—and I could hardly wait.” She described occurs during the limbo period before death thinking how strange the whole experience becomes permanent. was, wondering how long she’d been under- More questions about the gray zone arise water (later she learned it had been at least 30 from the phenomenon of thukdam, a rare minutes), finding comfort in the knowledge occur rence in which a monk dies but there is that her husband and children would be ﬁne seem ingly no physical decomposition for a week without her. Then she felt her body come out or more. Richard Davidson of the University of of the boat and could see the ﬁrst responders Wisconsin, who has spent years studying the doing CPR. She heard one of them calling to neuroscience of meditation, has long been in- her, “Come back, come back!”—which she said trigued by this—is the person conscious or not? she found “really very irritating.” dead or not?—especially after he saw a monk in Kevin Nelson, a neurologist at the Univer- thukdam at the Deer Park monastery in Wis- sity of Kentucky, was on Neal’s panel, and he consin in the summer of 2015. was skeptical—not of her memory, which he “If I had just casually walked into the room, I acknowledged was intense and valid, but of its would have thought he was sitting in deep med- explanation. “These are not return-from-death itation,” Davidson says, his voice on the phone

the crossing 49

still a little awestruck. “His skin looked totally fresh and viable, no decomposition whatsoever.” The sense of the dead man’s presence, even at close range, helped inspire Davidson to study thukdam scientiﬁcally. He has assembled some basic medical equipment, such as EEGs and stethoscopes, at two ﬁeld stations in India and has trained an on-site team of 12 Tibetan physicians to test these monks—preferably beginning while they’re still alive—to see whether any brain activity continues after their death. “It’s likely that in many of these practitioners, they enter a state of meditation before they die, and there is some kind of maintenance of that state afterward,” Davidson says. “Just how that occurs, and what the explanation might be, eludes our conventional understanding.” His research, though grounded in Western science, aims for a different kind of understanding, a more nuanced one that might clarify what happens not only to monks in thukdam but also to anyone traveling across the border between life and death.

Disintegration usually proceeds swiftly after a person dies. When the brain stops functioning, it loses all ability to keep the other systems in balance. So to allow Karla Pérez to continue nurturing her fetus after her brain stopped working, a team of more than a hundred doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers had to ﬁll in as ad hoc orchestrators. They took readings continuously, around the clock, of Pérez’s blood pressure, kidney function, and electrolytes, all the while adjusting what was Berta Jimenez talks going into her tubes and IV lines. daily to an image of her But even as the team members performed the daughter, Karla Pérez, declared brain-dead functions of Pérez’s ruined brain, they still had in 2015 while she trouble thinking of her as dead. To a person, they was pregnant. Doctors treated her as though she were in a deep coma, fought to keep Pérez’s greeting her by name when they came into the body functioning for room and saying goodbye when they left. 54 days, long enough To some extent these gestures toward Pérez’s to let baby Angel grow. personhood were made out of respect for the Jimenez and her husband are raising family, a courtesy to avoid seeming to treat her Angel and his three- as an inert baby vessel. But in a way, the gestures year-old sister, Genesis. went beyond courtesy. They reﬂected how the

the crossing 51 people attending to Pérez actually felt. remain viable for hours, maybe even days. The Todd Lovgren, co-leader of the medical team, timing of the declaration of death is sometimes knows the anguish of losing a daughter—he a matter of personal attitude, he says. When lost one too, the oldest of his five children, who he was in training, he notes, people would stop would have been 12 years old had she lived. “It CPR after just five to ten minutes, assuming would have ofended me not to treat Karla like a that any longer would mean irreparable brain person,” he told me. “I saw a young woman with damage. painted fingernails, her mom doing her hair, But resuscitation scientists have learned with warm hands and warm toes … Whether her ways to keep the brain and other organs from brain was still functional or not, I don’t think dying even after the heart stops. They know her humanity was gone.” that lowering body temperature helps—which Speaking as a parent rather than a clinician, happened naturally with Gardell Martin, and Lovgren says he thought something of Pérez’s which happens deliberately in some ERs that essence was still there in the bed—even though routinely chill patients before doing CPR. They he knew, by the time of her second CT scan, that know that persistence helps too, especially in not only was her brain not functioning but large hospitals that use machines to regulate chest portions of it were dying of and peeling away. compressions or that someday might use drugs (Despite this, he hadn’t tested for the last of the such as iodide. three criteria of brain death, apnea, fearing that Parnia compares resuscitation science to removing Pérez from the ventilator for even a aeronautics. It never seemed possible for peo- few minutes might harm the fetus.) ple to fly, yet in 1903 the Wright brothers flew. On February 18, ten days after Pérez’s stroke, How incredible, he says, that it took only 66 it became clear that her blood wasn’t clotting years from that first, 12-second flight to a moon normally—an indication that dead brain tissue landing. He thinks such advances can happen was getting into her bloodstream, one more sign in resuscitation science too. When it comes to to Lovgren that “she was never going to recov- reversing death, Parnia believes we’re still in the er.” By this time the fetus was 24 weeks old, so Kitty Hawk era. the team transferred Pérez from the main cam- Yet doctors are already able to snatch life pus back to Methodist Women’s, the maternity from death in stunning, inspiring ways. In Ne- hospital. They managed to correct the clotting braska that happened on April 4, 2015, the day problem for the moment. But they were ready before Easter, when a baby boy named Angel to do a C-section as soon as it became clear that Pérez was born by C-section at Methodist Wom- it was time to let go, when even the semblance en’s Hospital just before noon. Angel is alive of a living person that their skills and instru- today because doctors were able to keep his ments had patched together was beginning to brain-dead mother’s body functioning for 54 fall apart. days, long enough to let him grow into a small yet otherwise perfectly normal newborn, two To Sam Parnia, death is potentially revers- pounds, 12.6 ounces, miraculous in his ordinari- ible. Cells inside our bodies don’t usually die ness. A baby who turned out to be the milagro when we die, he says; some cells and organs can his grandparents had been praying for. j

At the start of this project What meaning do you hope one woman and her family photographer Lynn John- readers ﬁnd in their story? moved through that time. son connected with a friend The intention of the project And they did so with a lot of whose mother, Phyllis, was was to ask, How do you tenderness and love, with an dying. Find the family’s pow- want to die? Because we’re effort to help her be pain free erful story at ngm.com/more. all going to do it. This is how and fear free.

52 national geographic • april 2016 Where Death Doesn’t Mean Goodbye...

In a remote corner of Indonesia, the departed—and their corpses— remain a part of the family.

BY AMANDA BENNETT PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN LEHMANN

53 Friends and family inspect the body of Debora Maupa’, who died in 2009 at age 73. A well-preserved body, mummiﬁed with a solution of formaldehyde and water, is thought to bring good fortune. Preceding page: A family member adjusts glasses worn by Tappang Rara, who died in 2006 at age 65.

Near Rantepao, Sulawesi, cousins and sisters surround three-year-old Syahrini Tania Tiranda, who died the day before. They touch her and talk to her. To them she is to makula’—a sick person.

ne night, a little before seven, OElisabeth Rante pulls a golden curtain back from the doorway. Together we slip inside. She speaks to her husband. “Papa … Papa,” she whis- pers. “We have a guest from far away.” Behind us, second eldest son Jamie enters the room with a tray and walks up quietly. “Here is your rice, Papa. Here is your ﬁsh. Here are the chil- ies,” he says. As we back silently out of the room, Elisabeth says softly, “Wake up, Papa. It’s time for your dinner.” I turn back for a moment as eldest son Yokke explains: “She’s taking your picture, Papa.” A touching family scene. Nothing that couldn’t happen anywhere on Earth. Except for one thing. Elisabeth’s husband, a former clerk in the city marriage bureau, has been dead for nearly two weeks. Here, in the handsome, melon-colored concrete house of a respected and prosperous family, Petrus Sampe lies mo- tionless on a wooden twin bed, a red patterned blanket tucked under his chin. For several more days in this house on the and rice dinner for more than a hundred, family fringe of the town of Rantepao, in the remote members lift Petrus from the bed into a coin. highlands of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Videographers record the event. Eight or more Petrus will lie in this bed. His wife and children children—relatives and friends from the neigh- will speak to him as they bring him food four borhood—push each other out of the way to get times a day—breakfast, lunch, dinner, and mid- a better view. Afterward Petrus will remain at afternoon tea. “We do this because we love him home, in his coin, until his funeral in Decem- and respect him so much,” Yokke says. Elisabeth ber, four months from now. His wife will live in adds, “Before, we used to eat together. He’s still the house with him until then; some families at home—we should feed him.” Formalin (form- follow the old custom of never leaving a dead aldehyde plus water) treatments shortly after person alone. Until the funeral, Elisabeth and death mean the body will not putrefy, but in her children will call him to makula’—a sick time it will mummify. The room’s scent is noth- person. “We believe that even though the fa- ing more than the usual hint of sandalwood in ther is to makula’, his soul is still in the house,” a Torajan house. On the wall a picture of Jesus Yokke says. Christ leading a lamb looks down. For Torajans, the death of the body isn’t the Four days later, after musical tributes, a Chris- abrupt, final, severing event of the West. In- tian religious service, and a pork, vegetable, stead, death is just one step in a long, gradually

58 national geographic • april 2016 Risma Paembonan takes dinner to her mother-in-law, Maria Salempang, who died two weeks earlier, at 84. Time at home with parents can be highly prized. “I’m not sad, because she’s still with us,” says another Torajan woman of her 73-year-old mother, who has lain dead in the house for more than a year. unfolding process. Late loved ones are tended grief when loved ones die. But far from pushing at home for weeks, months, or even years after death away, almost everyone here holds death death. Funerals are often delayed as long as nec- at the center of life. Torajans believe that people essary to gather far-ﬂung relatives. The grand- aren’t really dead when they die and that a pro- est funeral ceremonies are week-long events found human connection lasts well past death. drawing Torajans home in a vast reverse dias- Death for many Torajans is not a brick wall but pora from wherever in the world they may be. a gauze veil. It is not a severing but just another When a brigade of a hundred or more motorcy- kind of connection. Often in Toraja the deep cles and cars rips through town accompanying link with a loved one doesn’t end at the grave. a corpse home from far away, traic stops in a Periodically some northern Torajans bring their manner that not even an ambulance or a police relatives out of their tombs to give them fresh oicer can command. Here, death trumps life. clothing and burial shrouds. Torajans do not reject medical treatments for No one knows exactly when Torajan death life-threatening conditions. Nor do they escape practices began. The Torajan language was

death in toraja 59 ASIA

SULAWESI EQUATOR (CELEBES) Gulf of PAPUA Tomini INDONESIA INDIAN AUSTRALIA OCEAN

SULAWESI Gulf of (CELEBES) Tolo TORAJA Pangala UTARA Rantepao TANA Toraja Heartland TORAJA Nearly half a million Torajans live in the Gulf of Banda Sea Bone highlands of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The vast majority, at least 90 0 mi 100 Makassar percent, are Christians, but they remain (Ujungpandang) 0 km 100 NGM MAPS inuenced by their traditional religion, Aluk To Dolo, or Way of the Ancestors.

written down only in the early 20th century, death, which it considers a failure of technolo- so most of the old traditions are still oral. Only gy or will. That leaves most Americans dying in recently, through carbon dating of wooden cof- institutions, when the majority say they would fin fragments, have archaeologists concluded prefer to die in peace at home. After my hus- that there are Torajan death practices that band, Terence, died, I began seeking alternatives. date back at least as far as the ninth century I have come here to explore a culture that is even A.D. The first Dutch ships arrived in what is now more extreme, but in the opposite direction. Indonesia in the late 16th century, searching for There are obvious limits to my search. Feed- nutmeg and cloves. Just over 300 years later ing the dead, letting bodies hang around, and they reached Toraja, a cultural region that today opening coins aren’t practices the rest of us encompasses the districts of Toraja Utara and will likely adopt anytime soon. Even so, I can’t Tana Toraja. Thanks to Dutch missionaries, it’s help wondering if the more gradual rhythm and a Christian enclave, made up mostly of Protes- pacing of Torajan death practices don’t hew tants but also Roman Catholics, in a majority- more closely to the actual racking and shud- Muslim country. Christianity has tried more dering experience of human grief than do our or less successfully to partner with traditional own more buttoned-up rituals. practices: Nearly every step of a Torajan death Seeing, talking to, and feeling the presence of is greeted with prayers, readings from Matthew a dead loved one are commonplace in the West, or John, and a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. write Colin Murray Parkes and Holly G. Priger- Toraja is dotted with villages perched high son in Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult on the side of clifs or nestled deep in the val- Life. “I talk to him and quite expect him to an- leys below. Rantepao, a dusty town of 26,000, swer me,” they quote one widow as saying. Grief is reached mainly via an eight-hour trip from itself, they say, doesn’t follow a clean trajectory Sulawesi’s largest city, Makassar, on 200 miles but rather erupts and calms in cycles over many of corkscrewing, clif-hugging road. The vil lages years—just as Torajan death practices do. But in turn are connected only by winding, one- the Western habit of sweeping the dead out of lane dirt paths carrying two-lane traffic that sight within days or even hours of death would dodges dogs and toddlers along routes pocked seem far too abrupt to a Torajan. “My moth- with head-banging, watermelon-size ruts. er died suddenly, so we aren’t ready yet to let I made the rough trek here after years spent her go,” says Yohana Palangda, as she begins to writing and speaking about an American way of weep. “I can’t accept burying her too quickly.” death that glorifies medicine and drugs but fears Her mother has continued to receive guests in

60 national geographic • april 2016 an upstairs room for more than a year. Because under trees, standing alongside the road, or be- Yohana’s mother was the village chief—a po- ing walked in circles by young men who tend sition Yohana now has—villagers continue to them as affectionately as they would pets. A come to seek blessings for important events, or master of ceremonies high in a tower above the even permission to marry. crowd addresses a magnificent animal, its huge, Michaela Budiman, an anthropologist at gracefully curved horns as wide as a man is tall. Charles University, in Prague, Czech Republic, “You are the most important bufalo here,” writes that if the deceased in Toraja were buried he says. “You will go with this man to the next immediately, it would be “as if a hawk careened world and make him rich.” suddenly upon its prey, snatching it in its talons A grand Torajan funeral is measured in the and vanishing forever in the split of a second.” number and quality of bufalo, which serve as So what is the diference between Yohana’s a form of currency. Everything about the fu- reluctance to let her mother go and our own? Or neral is hierarchical, cementing the status of between Elisabeth’s conversation with her dead the dead person’s family, the people who at- husband and the ones Western widows secretly tend, and many who don’t. Today is near the hold with theirs? Or Elisabeth’s family’s feeding end of more than a week of meals, receptions, ritual compared with novelist Joan Didion’s re- meetings, prayers, entertainment, and carefully luctance to part with her dead husband’s shoes, choreographed rituals separating the dead grad- lest he need them when he returns? The best ually from life. The body moves from the home thing to resolve grief is time. What if we, like the into the family’s ancestral building, then into Torajans, gave ourselves more time to unspool a nearby rice barn, then to the funeral tower it at its own rate? overlooking the ceremonial plain. Funerals glue Torajans tightly, one family to A few days after my visit to the deceased the next, one village to the next. Funerals con- Petrus Sampe and his wife, another man’s funer- sume savings as people outdo each other in gifts al is in full swing at the other end of town. I climb of animals, creating multigenerational obliga- a shaded bamboo structure the family has built tions and conspicuous consumption. Your cous- for out-of-town guests. I curl up on a rug next in donates a bufalo? You must give a bigger one. to a young teen, the granddaughter of the de- You can’t repay a past gift? Then your son or ceased. Dinda applies eyeliner. She fiddles with daughter must. If they can’t, the burden will fall her smartphone. Everyone likes funerals, espe- to your grandchildren. This dark side of funeral cially for the chance to meet faraway relatives, obligations can be clearly heard in the cries of she says, as three younger cousins romp nearby, the emcee announcing the gifts. “Whose pig is including around their grandfather’s coin. this?” he intones over a loudspeaker. “Whose Hundreds of men, women, and children bufalo is this?” In a metal-roofed shelter below, wander below or sit chatting in the shade of an- government oicials tally the quality and size cestral homes—called tongkonan—distinctive of each gift for tax purposes. At the ceremony’s stilted structures that carpet the region, their end the neat ledger will be presented to the fam- giant curved roofs seeming to float like huge ily, which will be expected to reciprocate when red boats on seas of palm, coffee trees, and some member of a giver’s family dies. bougainvillea. Torajan funerals are also great fun. A funeral The spaces between the tongkonan are clut- is a wedding, a bar mitzvah, and a family reunion tered with squealing pigs bound to bamboo all in one, easily outstripping the conviviality poles, soon to become lunch. Women in slim of Irish wakes. Lavish funerals are a chance black-and-white sheath dresses sell cigarettes. A to meet and mingle, to eat and drink well, to motorcycle vendor hawks Mylar balloons. Sleek, enjoy games and entertainment—even to net- fat water buffalo are everywhere, lounging work for jobs or eye prospective mates. There

death in toraja 61

Family members prop up the body of Pangkung Rante Rante, thought to have died at the age of 115, to honor him. This rare practice, called dipatadongkon, is performed only by upper-class families. are water bufalo fights. (“No gambling,” the emcee announces. “The family is Christian, and the police are here. The family does not support gambling.”) As a cry goes up summoning the strongest to move the coin to the tower, at least 50 young men seize the bamboo poles. They chant their way around the field, pumping the coin up and down as the lyrics grow bawdy: something about body parts, and size, and sex- ual prowess. A water fight breaks out, with the bearers drenching each other, and the guests, with water from plastic cups. “You can make an excuse for a wedding, but you have to come to a funeral,” says Daniel Rantetasak, 52, who sits one bright afternoon in the VIP section at the funeral of Lassi Allo To’dang, Dinda’s grandfather. Daniel figures he has attended more than 300 funerals in his lifetime. He says that at a funeral like this a minimum of 24 bufalo should be sacrificed. Sometimes the number may exceed a hundred. At an average of 20 million rupiah per buf alo ($1,425)—prices can go much higher for the most prized, mottled ones—an elite funeral can top $400,000 in bufalo costs alone, paid for by socially compulsory donations and by the many family members who send money home from abroad. Food and drink for hundreds of guests and temporary bamboo housing for visitors add to the costs. People devote resources end. Here, they have been preparing for years.” to funerals even while struggling to pay $10,000 I avert my eyes at the buffalo sacrifice—55 for university expenses. One woman remem- will be killed in total. It feels brutal to Western bers her grandmother saying funds were too sensibilities. Torajans look on unfazed; their scarce to pay for college. A few weeks later her concern is more for the group than the individ- grandmother spent thousands on pigs for a rela- ual, says Stanislaus Sandarupa, a Torajan and a tive’s ceremony. “I was a victim of tradition,” the linguistic anthropologist at Hasanuddin Uni- woman says. It is commonly said that in Toraja, versity, in Makassar. The bufalo’s obligation, he one lives to die. says, is to provide meat to ensure human exis- Yet some Western tourists who come to To- tence. People, in turn, must care for the species raja seeking the exotic pageantry of funerals and make sure it endures. find that the human connections, unflinching contact with death, and sheer fun help shift While the funeral is unfolding in town, an- their thinking about their own culture’s hab- other set of ceremonies is taking place in the its. “When someone dies in Spain, it’s the worst countryside. August is a month not only for thing that can happen in a family,” says Antonio funerals but also for ma’nene’—the “second fu- Mouchet, an IT consultant touring from Ma- nerals” held by families every few years when drid. “We Western people … don’t think of the they return to ancestral tombs to tidy up, bring

64 national geographic • april 2016 Water buffalo in Toraja are raised to be sacrificed. Until then, boys (and sometimes girls) care for them with affection and pride, as they would a fine stallion or an expensive car. At the funeral the animals are killed by a machete chop to the jugular. The more buffalo sacrificed, the greater the prestige. the dead snacks and cigarettes, and take long- dead relatives, his companions in the crypt. buried bodies out for a turn in the sun and put Relaxed and fit, Pieter, Daniel’s son, followed fresh clothing on them. Daniel Seba Sambara his father in the construction business in Papua presides over a gathering that includes his wife, Province, more than a thousand miles away. a daughter and granddaughter, son, son-in-law, Pieter’s orange polo shirt is fashionable. His En- and many others congregated around a grand glish is excellent. His daughter, Monna, a civil family crypt on a breezy spot overlooking a val- engineer, passes around cell phone pictures of ley. Daniel wears new trousers and looks slightly her choir camp in Cincinnati. Pieter and his surprised, as if peering out from behind new family are thoroughly modern Torajans. wire-rimmed glasses. He died in 2012 after 20 So how does he feel seeing his three-years- years with diabetes. This is the first time his dead father lashed to a stucco pillar, with rela- family has seen him since he was interred. This tives posed at his side? Proud. And excited. His week, for the ceremony of ma’nene’, he was father’s body is relatively intact and recogniz- hauled out along with a dozen or so much longer able, unlike those of other relatives lying nearby,

death in toraja 65 which look more like Halloween skeletons. His skin is smooth. His fingernails and beard have grown since they saw him last, relatives exclaim. Daniel was nicknamed Ne’ Boss—Grandpa Boss—years ago, a commentary on his rags- to-riches success. The body’s state is a sign to Pieter that he too will prosper. “Not everybody is like this. It will bring his children and grandchildren success,” he says, gleefully. I approached this moment with trepidation. After all, we Westerners cringe at the sight of a corpse. Confronted with several, I find myself curiously calm and interested. Everyone is festive, wearing bright colors and appearing decidedly happy. The smell is musty, like a bunch of blankets put away wet and stored for several years. The sight is definitely odd but surprisingly not unpleasant or gruesome. “The way they handle the bodies, it’s not scary at all,” says Ki Tan, an Indonesian who grew up in the Neth- erlands, as he watches a family interact with a group of long-dead loved ones, including a year- old child, dead for 38 years. Nearby, a 21-year-old backpacker from Berlin grows reflective. “I feel very lucky to have seen this,” says Maria Hart, recalling sadly that she was so upset by her own grandfather’s death that she refused to attend his funeral. “On a personal level, I take some comfort in the tradition,” says Kathleen Adams, an anthropologist at Loyola University Chicago In search of Kambuno, we wind northward who has lived among Torajans and their dead. from the small town of Pangala, skirting rice fields and passing through village after village. The important thing, Torajans say, is that Shopkeepers, motorbike riders, and passersby they are not just individuals. The death of one direct us. Everyone knows where Kambuno person is only the dropping of a single stitch in lives. Two schoolgirls in white shirts, navy skirts, an intricate financial, social, and emotional can- and black ties hop in the car to point the way. vas winding backward through ancestors and When the road peters out, we continue on foot forward through children. How did Torajans up a steep, rocky course. come to believe this? I wonder. Go ask Kam- We find Petrus Kambuno, wiry, goateed, al- buno, the people say. He’s the man who knows most toothless, cutting grass by the side of the the answers. road. “You are lucky you found me,” he says. “There is no one left but me who knows these Watch a ma’nene’ ceremony, stories.” He claims to be 90 years old. He spins or “second funeral,” and listen a Genesis-like creation tale, with Toraja at its to Torajans talk about their relationship with the dead. center. “Here God created man in heaven, and You can ind the video at woman from the Earth,” he says. Looking out ngm.com/more. over lime green terraced rice fields framed

66 national geographic • april 2016 Tini Patiung breaks down moments before a group of men carry her mother to her grave. Ester Patiung died ten months earlier, at age 62; her body was kept in the family home as decisions were made about her funeral ceremony. against an aquamarine sky, it’s easy to believe and to have, and to become, an ancestor. So the that God chose this to be his Eden. question isn’t why do Torajans do what they Kambuno continues: God gave the gifts of do, but why do we do what we do? How did we bamboo and bananas from the Earth and betel distance ourselves so much from death, which and lime from the heavens. “He commanded us is, after all, just a part of life? How did we lose to use these things that give people pleasure to the sense of being connected to each other, to ease our grief, to make ourselves feel happy if our place in society, in the universe? we are sad when someone dies.” Kambuno gestures at his family crypt, which I realize I’m asking the wrong question. he says holds more than ten relatives. “My fa- Torajans, it appears, are probably more deeply ther is in here,” he says. “But I am here, so he is connected than we are to the way people every- not really dead. My mother is in here, but I have where feel death: the desire to stay connected daughters, so she is not really dead. My daugh- to loved ones in both body and spirit; to believe ters have been exchanged for my mother. I have that people don’t ever really die permanently; been exchanged for my father.” j

death in toraja 67 Cristina Banne, who died in 2011, is held up by her son Bartolomeus Bunga’ as grandson Jerry Putra Bunga’ gives a thumbs-up. With more than half of Torajans living elsewhere, funerals bring families back together.

70 nationalAFRICAN WHITE-BELLIED geographic TREE PANGOLIN • april A baby hitches 2016 a ride on its mother at Pangolin Conservation, a nonproﬁt organization in St. Augustine, Florida. The mammals are illegally killed for bush meat and their scales, which are claimed to have medical value. EV ERY LAST ONE

On a deeply personal mission, Joel Sartore is photographing as many animals as he can—before some disappear.

FIRST ROW Eastern subterranean termite, sand cat, Roanoke logperch, pink-sided tree frog, greenbottle blue tarantula, Eurasian red squirrel, Nicobar pigeon, green tree python SECOND ROW Philippine crocodile, Gulf fritillary butterfly, orangutan, red-fan parrot, bilby, Grevy’s zebra, Diana monkey, yellowtail clown fish THIRD ROW Curl-crested aracari, giant stag beetle, ring-tailed lemur, black-and-rufous elephant shrew, shortfin lionfish, desert millipede, Chinese flying frog, Yangtze giant softshell turtle FOURTH ROW Scorpion, four-toed hedgehog, giant panda, straw-necked ibis, Schmidt’s red-tailed monkey, Taiwan giant grass mantis, Florida regal doris, American flamingo FIFTH ROW Mandrill, racquet-tailed roller, Asian garden dormouse, rhinoceros snake, Australian finches, Amazonian horned frog, North American porcupine, flower beetle SIXTH ROW Chinstrap penguin, fire shrimp, lion-tailed macaque, red-knobbed imperial pigeon, panther chameleon, white-throated wood rat, common desert centipede, American oystercatcher SEVENTH ROW Blue-spotted emperor butterfly, pygmy slow loris, Panamanian golden frog, blue-spotted tree monitor, Nassarius snail, hyacinth macaw, dama gazelle, titan triggerfish EIGHTH ROW Himalayan wolf,#PHOTOARK metallic sweat bee, bat 73star, Guianan cock of the rock. Photographs taken at the locations listed on page 85. By Rachel Hartigan Shea Photographs by Joel Sartore

NAKED MOLE RAT This species of rodent, the ﬁrst animal to be photographed for Photo Ark, thrives in large underground colonies in arid parts of East Africa. Lincoln Children’s Zoo, Nebraska

or years National Geographic Indian tribes “knowing that their ways of life photographer Joel Sartore worked far away from were going to be seriously altered” by westward Fhome—documenting the astonishing wildlife of expansion. He thought of Edward Curtis, who Bolivia’s Madidi National Park or scrambling up “photographed and recorded, on early movie the three tallest peaks in Great Britain or get- footage and sound,” threatened native cultures. ting too close to grizzly bears in Alaska. His wife, “And then I thought about myself,” he says. Kathy, stayed in Lincoln, Nebraska, and took care “I’d done almost 20 years of photographing in of the kids. “He never wanted to change diapers the wild, and I wasn’t moving the needle very or be a stay-at-home dad,” she says. much in terms of getting people to care.” But in 2005, on the day before Thanksgiving, He had taken pictures that showed in one Kathy was diagnosed with breast cancer. The frame why a species was struggling—an Ala- cancer sentenced her to seven months of chemo- bama beach mouse, for instance, in front of therapy, six weeks of radiation treatments, and a coastal development that threatened its two operations. So Joel Sartore had no choice: habitat—but he wondered whether a simpler With three kids ages 12, 9, and 2, he couldn’t trav- approach would be more effective. Portraits el for the stories that were the mainstay of his could capture an animal’s form, features, and career. Of that time, he says now, “I had a year in many cases its penetrating gaze. Could they at home to think.” He thought about John James also be used to capture public attention? Audubon, the ornithologist. “He painted several birds that are extinct now,” says Sartore, who has On a summer day in 2006 Sartore called up his prints of Audubon’s Carolina parakeet and ivory- friend John Chapo, president and CEO of the billed woodpecker in his home. “He could see Lincoln Children’s Zoo, and asked if he could the end for some animals, even in the 1800s.” He take portraits of some of the zoo’s animals. Even thought of George Catlin, who painted American with Kathy’s illness, he could work a little close

74 national geographic • april 2016 to home—and the zoo was one mile away. Chapo extinct by the end of this century, as a result of told Sartore to come on down. “I was mostly habitat loss, climate change, and the wildlife humoring him,” Chapo says. trade. “People think we’re going to lose animals When he arrived, Sartore requested two in their grandchildren’s time,” says Jenny Gray, things from Chapo and curator Randy Scheer: CEO of Zoos Victoria in Australia. “We’re losing a white background and an animal that would them now. And those animals are gone forever.” sit still. “What about a naked mole rat?” said Zoos are the last hope for many animals on Scheer. He put the bald, bucktoothed rodent the verge of vanishing—but zoos shelter only a on a cutting board from the zoo kitchen, and fraction of the world’s species. Even so, Sartore Sartore started taking pictures. estimates that it will take 25 years or more to It might seem odd that such a humble crea- photograph most of the species in captivity. ture could inspire what has become Sartore’s During the past decade he’s photographed lifework: photographing the world’s captive spe- more than 5,600 animals for the passion project cies and making people care about their fate. he calls Photo Ark. He’s taken pictures of small But launching a planetwide mission with a tiny ones: a green-and-black poison dart frog, an El rodent fits perfectly with Sartore’s philosophy. Segundo flower-loving fly. Large ones: a polar “I get most excited when I do little critters like bear, a woodland caribou. Marine animals: a this,” he says, “because nobody’s ever going to foxface rabbitfish, a Hawaiian bobtail squid. give them the time of day.” Birds: an Edwards’s (Continued on page 84)

There are estimated to be between two Photo Ark is a joint project million and eight million species of animals of National Geographic and on the planet. Many of them (forecasts range Joel Sartore. Learn more at from 1,600 species to three million) could go natgeophotoark.org. FENNEC FOX The smallest foxes in the world have enormous ears to cool them down as they traverse sand dunes in the Sahara, where they are common. Their cuteness makes them attractive to the wild-pet trade. Saint Louis Zoo

76 national geographic • april 2016 #PHOTOARK 77 RED-RUFFED LEMUR

Nearly half of all primate species are in danger of extinction, and the ﬁve here are among the world’s most endangered. Around 70 Cat Ba langurs are believed to exist worldwide; the population of red-ruffed lemurs is similarly diminished. The brown-headed spider monkey is rapidly losing its South American

SUMATRAN ORANGUTAN

78 national geographic • april 2016 CAT BA LANGUR

habitat. But life’s pleasures remain: The Sumatran orangutan rests on a comfortable perch, and the Delacour’s langur relishes a bit of banana. Clockwise from top left: Miller Park Zoo; Endangered Primate Rescue Center, Vietnam (two); Summit Municipal Park, Panama; Rolling Hills Zoo, Kansas

BROWN-HEADED SPIDER MONKEY DELACOUR’S LANGUR

#PHOTOAR 79

NORTHERN WHITE RHINOCEROS This female named Nabiré was one of the last of her subspecies. She died last summer, a week after this photograph was taken. A few months later another northern white rhino died, leaving only three. Dvu˚ r Králové Zoo, Czech Republic

SNOWY OWL BRAZILIAN PORCUPINE MALAYAN TAPIR Snowy owls live in the upper Also known as the prehensile-tailed The baby shown here was just six latitudes of North America, Europe, porcupine, the largely nocturnal days old when it was photographed. and Asia, but this one ended up in species spends some 85 percent of The coats of young tapirs are Nebraska and was starving when it its time in trees. Sartore’s camera spotted to blend in with the dappled was rescued by Raptor Recovery. caught it at rest but alert. light of the tropical forest floor. Raptor Recovery Nebraska Saint Louis Zoo Minnesota Zoo After a photo shoot at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, a clouded leopard cub climbs on Sartore’s head. The leopards, which live in Asian tropical forests, are illegally hunted for their spotted pelts. Grahm S. Jones, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium pheasant, a Montserrat oriole. And on and on supported by the National Geographic Society, and on. Sartore says he won’t stop until he dies have never been photographed so distinctively or his knees give out. before, with their markings, their fur, and their Sandra Sneckenberger, a biologist with the feathers so clearly on display. If they disappear, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has seen firsthand this will be the way to remember them. Sartore’s how Sartore’s photos can move others. A few goal “isn’t just to have a giant obituary of what years ago the population of Florida grasshopper we’ve squandered,” he says. “The goal is to see sparrows—a bird Sneckenberger concedes looks these animals as they actually looked in life.” “drab brown” from a distance—had plummeted Now millions of people have seen the animals to about 150 pairs at only two locations. After that Sartore has photographed. People have met Sartore’s image of the bird raised awareness of their gazes on Instagram, in this magazine, in its plight, federal funding to help the agency documentaries, and projected on the sides of conserve it soared from $20,000 to more than some of the world’s great monuments: the Em- a million dollars. pire State Building, the United Nations head- Sartore has taken portraits of animals that quarters, and, most recently, St. Peter’s Basilica. may be saved—but also of animals that are doomed. Last summer, at the Dvůr Králové There are as many ways to photograph an an- Zoo in the Czech Republic, he photographed a imal as there are animals, but Sartore operates northern white rhino, one of only five left in the within some basic parameters. All the portraits world. The 31-year-old female lay down to sleep are taken with a black or white background. “It’s at the end of the shoot. A week later it died of a great equalizer,” he says. “The polar bear is no a ruptured cyst. In fall 2015 another northern more important than a mouse, and a tiger and white rhino died; one male and two females re- a tiger beetle are exactly the same.” main. “Do I think that the rhinos going away is Large animals are photographed in their sad?” Sartore says. “It’s not just sad. It’s epic.” enclosures, where Sartore either hangs a giant Most of the animals in Photo Ark, which is black curtain to serve as backdrop or paints a

84 national geographic • april 2016 Photo Ark has documented 5,679* captive species 1,674 1,170 966 785 557 527 since 2006. birds reptiles invertebrates mammals amphibians fish

189 of the 1,674 documented 186 35 223 123 62 bird species are threatened.**

* AS OF JANUARY 2016. **SPECIES LISTED BY IUCN AS VULNERABLE, ENDANGERED, CRITICALLY ENDANGERED, OR EXTINCT IN THE WILD MATTHEW TWOMBLY. SOURCE: JOEL SARTORE

wall. At the Houston Zoo he draped 18 feet of on extinction, was a picture of Martha, the black cloth at one end of a giraffe’s stall. The world’s last passenger pigeon. He remembers girafe didn’t even notice, says Peter Riger, vice returning to that page over and over: “I was president of conservation at the zoo. “It just amazed that you could go from billions to none.” knew it was coming in to get lunch.” Joel and Kathy met as University of Nebraska Small animals are placed in a soft-sided box, students at a spot called the Zoo Bar. “Our dates,” with Sartore poking his lens through a slit in the Kathy recalls, “were fishing and frog-gigging,” side. “Some of them fall asleep or eat in there,” which involves spearing frogs for their legs. The he says. “A lot of them don’t like it at all.” He activity can be justified, Sartore hastens to ex- keeps the sessions short, a few minutes at most. plain: “They were bullfrogs; they’re an invasive Sartore doesn’t wrangle the animals himself; species here in Lincoln.” he leaves that to the zookeepers. If at any point Kathy’s cancer came back in 2012; she had a “the animal shows signs of stress, the shoot is double mastectomy. That same year, their son over,” he says. “The safety and comfort of the Cole, who was 18, was diagnosed with lympho- animals come first.” None has been injured. ma. Both recovered, but the illnesses have left Sartore, however, has not been so lucky. “A their mark. “We don’t get uptight about too crane tried to blind me one time,” he says. “That much anymore,” Sartore says. was terrifying.” A mandrill, a burly type of pri- Photo Ark has changed him as well. “It has mate, punched him in the face. A white-crowned made me very aware of my own mortality,” he hornbill—“the nastiest, most badass bird I’ve had says. “I can see how long it’s going to take.” If to do”—struck him with its beak and drew blood. he can’t finish the job—he still has thousands “But aren’t I asking for it, in a way?” he says. of species to photograph—Cole will take over. “I want the pictures to go to work,” Sartore says, Joel and Kathy Sartore sit side by side at their “long after I’m dead.” j kitchen table in Lincoln with the lights dimmed. His arm rests on her shoulders. He had returned from Madagascar the night before (he began To document the world’s creatures, traveling again in 2007) and wanted her to help photographer Joel Sartore must abide the unruly, distract the curious, him select photos of rare lemurs and pochards, and clean up unexpected messes. a kind of duck, to post on Instagram. “The thing Watch video of the animal antics at that draws people is the human element,” says ngm.com/more.

Kathy, who often serves as his photo editor. Animals on pages 72 and 73 photographed at Audubon Buttery Garden and Insecta- Sartore grew up not too far from Lincoln, in rium, Louisiana; Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden, Hungary; Chattanooga Zoo; Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden; Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Ohio; Conserva- Ralston, Nebraska. His parents loved nature. tion Fisheries, Inc., Tennessee; Dallas World Aquarium; Dallas Zoo; Dreamworld, Aus- tralia; Fort Worth Zoo; Gladys Porter Zoo, Texas; Great Plains Zoo, South Dakota; His father took him mushroom gathering in Houston Zoo; Lee G. Simmons Conservation Park and Wildlife Safari, Nebraska; Lincoln the spring, ﬁshing in the summer, and hunting Children’s Zoo, Nebraska; Miller Park Zoo, Illinois; Nebraska Aquatic Supply; Newport Aquarium, Kentucky; Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium; Padmaja Naidu Hima- in the fall. His mother, who died last summer, layan Zoological Park, India; Philadelphia Zoo; Phoenix Zoo; Plzenˇ Zoo and Botanical Garden, Czech Republic; Pontiicia Universidad Católica del Ecuador; Pure Aquariums, gave him a Time-Life book about birds when Nebraska; Riverbanks Zoo and Garden, South Carolina; Riverside Discovery Center, he was around eight years old that may have Nebraska; Saint Louis Zoo; Sedge Island Natural Resource Education Center, New Jersey; Sedgwick County Zoo, Kansas; Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay, Nevada; changed his life. Toward the back, in a section Suzhou Zoo, China; University of Utah; Zoo Atlanta

#PHOTOARK 85 Bringing nature closer to home

URBAN

Swimmers bob down the Eisbach (“ice brook” in German), a short, man-made river in Munich’s English Garden. The park is named for an informal landscape style popular in the 18th century, when it was ﬁrst laid out. PARKS

Cheonggyecheon meanders through Seoul, South Korea. Once the city’s life- blood, the stream was covered for years. Now it’s a place that embraces community and the soothing nature of water. the power of park a yearlong exploration

By Ken Otterbourg Photographs by Simon Roberts There is magic here, the delight in being not quite lost and not quite found.

I am of trail, following an unnamed stream in A former auto repair yard is now a marsh northeast Ohio, scrambling over downed trees created by beavers damming an old canal. And through a ravine of crumbling shale, the water on the site of an arena that was once home to milky with silt as it cascades over tiny falls. The the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team, there sun dances with the stream and the hardwoods. is a broad field that’s ideal for watching hawks. When I take off my boots and splash in the The built and natural worlds are in proximity, small pools, I feel the cool of the mud between layered and competing for attention from the my toes. In the distance, just over the rise, the bikers and hikers and joggers making their ways sound of the city comes and goes. Civilization up and down the old canal towpath. is so close and seems so far, and in that toggle is This is the urban park of today. Unlike the the wonder of an urban park. neatly drawn public spaces of an earlier age, The place is an ofshoot of Cuyahoga Valley these parks are reclaimed from the discarded National Park, which stretches like a skinny ink- parcels of our cities: Stranded patches of blot between the gridded sprawl of Cleveland woods, abandoned military bases and airports, and Akron. The park’s centerpiece is the resil- storm-water systems, rail lines and bridges, ient Cuyahoga River, once a punch line about places where scraps of land are pieced together environmental ruin after an oil-slicked pile of like quilts or strung together like beads. debris on the water caught fire. The park came The experimentation is global. Rail parks, five years later, in 1974, first mostly in name, many inspired by the success of New York City’s and then slowly assembled from land across the High Line, are now beguiling fixtures in Sydney, compact valley. Helsinki, and other cities. Singapore is building The grandeur is varied and comes in small an artificial rain forest inside Changi Airport. doses. Sandstone clifs are hidden in the woods. At the edge of Mexico City, an immense park

90 The sweeping views of San Francisco Bay from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area draw visitors such as Ben Fernyhough, who came from Oregon on a skateboarding trip. is planned on what remains of Lake Texcoco. Work on the $372 million project, a recla- I am captivated by the breadth of innovation mation job of mammoth proportions, began and energized by the passion people bring to in 2003. First the elevated highway was torn these spaces. As I explored them, what became down. Then the surface road was ripped up, clear is that urban parks aren’t a substitute for again exposing the stream. Like many resto- the enormous and often remote parks that pro- rations, this one is not entirely faithful to the tect our most majestic forests and mountains past. The stream was intermittent, barely and canyons. They serve a diferent purpose; the trickling in the dry months and surging during truth is, we need both. the summer monsoon. Thanks to pumping stations that deliver more than 30 million gal- On a hot and hazy afternoon, I set off to lons a day from the Han River, the stream now walk the four-mile length of Cheonggyecheon, babbles reliably. the lovely ribbon of water that unfurls with qui- “People criticize this as a man-made river or et assertiveness through the heart of Seoul. fish tank,” Lee In-keun, a wiry and animated In the city’s preindustrial years, the stream man, told me as we strolled the upper portion was where lovers courted and women gathered of Cheonggyecheon. The paths by the stream to do wash. But Seoul’s boom after the Korean were crowded with people enjoying the water War brought shantytowns and pollution, and and pointing with delight at carp idling in the the stream became an eyesore. In 1958 a road deeper pools. Research shows it provides a cool- was built over it. An elevated highway, finished ing efect during Seoul’s steamy summers. Lee in 1976, completed the entombment. oversaw the restoration project and agrees that There Cheonggyecheon might have stayed, if Cheonggyecheon is artificial. But that distinc- not for serendipity and politics. Throughout the tion doesn’t matter to him; he finds the presence 1990s, a small group that included academics of nature as vital as in a truly natural setting. and engineers sought to uncover the waterway. “It’s a jewel of the city. You can hear the water They figured out how to manage the stream’s flow in the central area of ten million people. It’s hydrology and mitigate the traffic snarl that unbelievable. We made that intentional.” might ensue when the highway and the road Cheonggyecheon begins in the financial dis- below, which carried more than 170,000 vehi- trict, within a canyon of oice buildings. The cles a day, were removed. “I didn’t think the stream flows east, the banks widen, the con- money was the problem,” said Noh Soo-hong, crete gives way to thatches of reeds and glades a professor of environmental engineering at of trees. It moves past glitzy shopping areas and Yonsei University and one of the project’s first tired-looking wholesale districts and gigantic supporters. “I thought it was the will.” apartment complexes that rise up like fortresses. The missing component was a leader with At one point a pair of concrete abutments ap- clout. That person arrived in the form of Lee pears in the stream. Part of the old highway, Myung-bak, a former construction executive they are reminders of the past and the imper- whose company had been the principal con- manence of our engineering. Many Seoul resi- tractor in building the highway. He made the dents find it hard to remember a time when the stream’s restoration a key issue in his suc- stream was covered, when herons didn’t wade cessful campaign for mayor of Seoul in 2002. gingerly in the water hunting for fish, when it (Five years later, he was elected president of wasn’t an inviting place. South Korea.) “It was a very dangerous idea,” I was near the end of Cheonggyecheon when said Hwang Kee-yeon, a transportation engi- I heard the singer. I followed her voice to a small neer who helped develop the master plan. “Lee stage under a bridge where a band was playing a Myung-bak decided, ‘I built it. It’s time for me Korean “trot” song, the honky-tonk sound mix- to demolish it.’ ” ing with haunting lyrics.

92 national geographic • April 2016 1660 ST. JAMES’S PARK LONDON, ENGLAND

British soldiers march in the annual summer parade that marks the queen’s ofﬁcial birthday. The route runs through the park, which is adjacent to Buckingham Palace. Once a swamp, then the site of a hospital for patients with leprosy, the land became royal property in 1532, when Henry VIII acquired it as a preserve for deer hunting. When Charles II became king, he opened the grounds to London- ers, creating one of the earliest public parks.

When I released my hold on my mother’s hand considered a turning point in the urban parks and turned back, movement. Even an owl cried. So did I. Meyer is now 82, and by turns gracious and I sat on a stool at the edge of a gathering of feisty. In 1969 she was a stay-at-home mother retirees and listened, and eventually a wom- when she heard about plans to build an archives an with a sweet smile and a firm insistence center at Fort Miley, a largely empty coastal asked me to dance. We shuled to the music, defense site a few blocks from her house. She holding hands, joined like the city and the park began organizing to save the space as open land that runs through it. and eventually joined forces with activists on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge who were “This is where it all began,” said Amy Meyer, alarmed that suburban sprawl might destroy the as we pulled into the driveway of Fort Miley, austere beauty of the Marin Headlands. part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Golden Gate, along with Gateway National Area at the northwestern edge of San Fran- Recreation Area in New York and New Jersey, cisco. A coyote stood in the middle of the road was established in 1972. These new parks sig- and stared at us, in no apparent hurry to move. naled a move by the Park Service to look beyond Though the National Park Service has main- its wilderness parks to more accessible places tained a presence in cities for years (it over- closer to America’s cities. As Walter Hickel, sec- sees the National Mall in Washington, D.C., retary of the interior and former governor of for example), the creation of Golden Gate is Alaska, said at the time, “We have got to bring

Urban Parks 93 1792 ENGLISH GARDEN MUNICH, GERMANY

Summer attracts sunbathers, clothed and otherwise, to the grassy banks of the Schwabinger Bach. The meadows in this park, one of Europe’s largest, have been popular with nudists since the 1970s. Among its features are a Chinese pagoda, a Japanese teahouse, and two beer gardens with seats for 9,500. The park’s designer opted for a natural appearance rather than the more formal layout typical of parks at the time.

1858 CENTRAL PARK NEW YORK, NEW YORK

The city’s storied heart is perhaps the world’s best known urban park, a lush expanse framed—and increasingly shaded— by the skyscrapers of Manhattan. More than 42 million people visit each year. Despite those crowds, the park still provides pockets of tranquillity. Birders like Jeffrey Ward (right) gather on weekend mornings in the Ramble, a wild woodland that’s a popular stopover in spring and fall for migrating birds.

the natural world back to the people, rather Francisco has its own Golden Gate Park, which than have them live in an environment where abuts the national park near the ocean. everything is paved over with concrete.” All this creates a daunting range of constitu- The people are definitely at Golden Gate, one ents, from hang gliders and politicians to surfers of the most visited places in the national park and commuters, and the battles over how best to system, drawing around 15 million visitors each manage the resources can be intense. year. It spans both sides of the entrance to San “We’re in a democracy, and democracies are Francisco Bay, with miles of coastline, tower- messy,” Golden Gate Superintendent Chris ing blufs, redwoods, and remnants of former Lehnertz said. A dog-management plan, for ex- military installations. And there is an island, ample, has been in the works for more than a Alcatraz, where 4,000 tourists a day disembark dozen years. from ferries to tour the former federal prison Lehnertz also is working with area govern- and ponder life behind bars. ments on a strategy for assisting the homeless, The park can be nearly a circus, with locals an issue at many urban parks. “I see a homeless on their morning strolls skirting past tourists, person who spends the night here as a visitor,” weekend Frisbee games and parties on the fields, she said, “just like I see somebody who walks and dogs on and of leash seemingly everywhere. their dog on a beautifully groomed trail.” Many visitors have no idea they’re in a nation- One morning I drove about five miles south al park. That’s understandable. There are no of San Francisco out to Milagra Ridge, a tiny grand entrances. Adding to the confusion, San outpost of the park with a commanding view of

96 national geographic • April 2016

1926 PARK GÜELL BARCELONA, SPAIN

Designed by Antoni Gaudí as an exclusive neighborhood for Barcelona’s wealthy, the site failed as a real estate venture. The city bought the development and opened it to the public. Along the popular Dragon Stairway are mosaic sculptures, including a colorful salamander that has become the park’s unofﬁcial mascot. Above the columns a large plaza offers sweeping views of the city and the Mediterranean Sea.

99 1955 SILESIA PARK CHORZÓW, POLAND

Wrested out of a wasteland of slag heaps, bootleg mines, and garbage dumps, this postindustrial landscape was transformed into a verdant area that includes a zoo and a dinosaur valley. Much of the work was done by volunteers coordinated by the Communist Party. In southern Poland’s urban core, the park is an inviting place for young people such as Maja Peryga (right), who visited the rose garden to photograph a friend.

the Pacific Ocean. The stuccoed developments is Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which of suburban Pacifica press in on the ridge and nestles up to the steel mills along Lake Mich- its rolling carpet of scrub and coastal prairie. igan in northwest Indiana and stretches into At the height of the Cold War this was a mis- the largely hidden beachfront of Gary, one of sile base, with barbed wire and guard dogs. The America’s poorest cities. “Big parks deliver the ridge eventually made its way into the fold of wealthy, white, rich people,” said Paul Labovitz, Golden Gate. Jutting up above a sea of housing, the park’s superintendent. But the future of the it’s become a serene and defiant island, a refuge Park Service means cultivating new visitors, and for threatened species such as the California that’s easier for the urban parks. Because they red-legged frog. are newer, Labovitz said, they have fewer tradi- Last year, in anticipation of its 100th anni- tions to get in the way of experimentation. versary, the National Park Service released its “Urban Agenda,” which is a continuation, al- The iconic urban parks with their straight though with more urgency, of earlier calls to borders and square shoulders aren’t going away. action begun in the 1970s. What the report They are treasured in cities around the world. makes clear is that it is good business and—with But the orderly layout they require is harder to America’s demographics changing rapidly—good find in places that are already built-up. So our politics to make the agency more relevant to an newer urban parks, in the United States and increasingly urban and diverse America. beyond, reflect the challenges of acquiring and One place where this new order is playing out developing land. There’s now more review from

100 national geographic • April 2016

1996 THE PRESIDIO SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Sunset and low tide lure walkers to Marshall’s Beach. Strategically located at the entrance to San Francisco Bay, the park was a military outpost for 218 years, used first by Spain, then Mexico, and finally the United States. Unlike other parks in the national system, it receives no federal money. Most revenue comes from renting out former military buildings, many of which are classified as historic structures.

103 2005 CHEONGGYECHEON SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

Commuters listen to a band on a pedestrian bridge spanning the park. The stream, although important to the city’s culture and development, was intermittent, dwindling to a rivulet at times. To ensure a constant ﬂow, more than 30 million gallons of water is pumped in daily from the nearby Han River. Most residents view that artiﬁciality as an acceptable trade-off for the serenity the park brings to the city.

the public as well as more oversight by regula- Perhaps the world’s most ambitious urban tors, said Adrian Benepe, the director of city park run with this entrepreneurial mind-set park development for the Trust for Public Land is the Presidio, the former Army base that is and former New York City parks commissioner. part of Golden Gate Recreation Area but oper- Compounding the problem is the hunt for mon- ates separately. Situated at the entrance to San ey to transform the bits and pieces of postin- Francisco Bay, the Presidio was ﬁrst claimed by dustrial landscape into parklands. “There is a Spain, then Mexico, and ﬁnally, in 1846, by the struggle because the cities are also paying for United States. Peace did what wars could not, health care and education,” Benepe said. “Often and in 1989 the Presidio was deemed unneces- the parks are the last priority.” What’s emerging, sary to the national defense, and the base—1,491 he said, is a model more reliant on working with acres of barracks, buildings, valleys, and breath- the private sector, both for building parks and taking vistas—was closed. for operating them. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, for ex- In 1994 it was transferred to the Park Service. ample, a foundation created from oil and bank- Unlike other national parks, the Presidio has ing wealth has donated $200 million toward a its own board of directors and now raises all its $350 million community park on the Arkansas own revenue, mainly by leasing out the former River. In Newark, New Jersey, Benepe’s group military housing as well as the hospital and ad- worked with government and business leaders ministrative buildings to residential and com- to bring a park to once contaminated property mercial tenants. The private businesses employ along the Passaic River. about 4,000 people, and more than 3,500 live on

104 national geographic • April 2016 the rehabbed base. A house in one of the swank- Tempelhof’s 1.2 square miles. When city plan- ier neighborhoods, where the Army brass once ners unveiled a proposal to build housing and lived, rents for $12,000 a month. The proceeds office space on a fifth of the land, a backlash are plowed back into restoration, renovation, led to a referendum in 2014 that blocked most and maintenance. The cypress trees, planted future development there. more than a century ago, are dying and need “You can feel the sky. You can breathe,” said to be replaced. Re-creating a wetland, part of a Diego Cárdenas, one of the leaders of the ref- broad plan to restore biodiversity, would require erendum movement, as we sat on the grass at tearing down less historic, but afordable, apart- Tempelhof. “If you start developing one part, ments, underscoring the constant soul-searching where will it end?” and rebalancing of competing missions. Tempelhof’s future still involves housing, “The overlay of values and land is more com- although perhaps not in the way either side en- plex here than at any other place,” said Michael visioned. Part of the terminal building, with its Boland, one of the Presidio’s top oicials. The three-quarter-mile-long curved roof, is provid- park’s assets, which brought in $100 million ing temporary shelter for some of the thousands last year, are far from typical, but that obscures of refugees who have poured into Germany. the larger point about urban parks, their fuzzy With the clarity of hindsight, oicials say the boundaries, and the compromises that they end development plan was not well explained and up forging. “I think the future looks a lot more they didn’t realize how people would respond like this than it does like wilderness areas.” once they were inside the park. Berliners have a history, they noted, of claiming unused open Wilderness can seem like both a bright line land as their own. At Tempelhof that happened and an increasingly subjective description of on a colossal scale. an environment that has all but disappeared. “They wanted to seize it,” said Ursula Renker, With urban parks it isn’t about absolutes but a planner with Berlin’s city government. “For often just about the joy of being outdoors. I was most people, the airport was part of their history. reminded of that when I visited Tempelhof, an There was a special fascination because it was airport turned park near the heart of Berlin. It so fenced in. You had to walk in through a gate.” was a weeknight, and in the hour before sunset people were pouring into the park. They rode The gates are still there, and you can see bicycles on the mile-long runways and jogged people break into a smile as they pass through around the meadows. Young men parasailed them. It is anticipatory pleasure, based on with skateboards, and mothers kicked soccer familiarity. Urban parks may not make our balls with their children. And because this is bucket lists, but they deserve a place on what I Germany, there was beer. would call our cofee-cup lists. Tempelhof Airport closed in 2008. When it And so it is with my favorite urban park, a reopened as a park two years later, there was wetland near my home. It’s nothing flashy, just uncertainty about whether it would be em- a few acres of low ground that were spared braced by Berliners. Then, as now, the park had development. I go there often. I like to get there few amenities; it was as if the airfield had just in the early morning, walk among the cattails, closed for a day so the tarmac could be repaved. and watch the two worlds—one of pavement But the authenticity—that it had been largely and the other of the swamp—come to life. As the unaltered—proved key to the park’s appeal. Res- sun rises, catching the tops of the trees, the traf- idents liked its openness and nearly unobstruct- fic grows along the four-lane roads that flank the ed sunsets. They delighted in entering property park. Eventually, the noise becomes constant that had once been of-limits. But most of all, enough that it fades into the background. Then, they reveled in the sense of freedom found in if I listen carefully, I can hear the birds sing. j

105 2010 SHERBOURNE COMMON TORONTO, ONTARIO

A wedding party poses for photographs at the zinc-clad Pavilion. The park offers green space on the densely developed Lake Ontario waterfront and a skating rink that doubles as a splash pad. In the Pavilion’s basement an ultraviolet system treats storm water and then sends it ﬂowing through dramatic sculptures into the lake. The park’s design has won praise for its clean look—and some criticism for its perceived sterility.

106

Snow softens a gorge in northern Armenia that people call Jardi Dzor, “massacre canyon,” where Turkish forces are said to have shot some 4,000 Armenians in 1920.

108 OUT OF EDEN WALK . PART FIVE GHOST LANDS A century-old slaughter still haunts Turkey and Armenia. The sturdy friendship between the Armenian Christian family of Nuran Tas¸ (second from left) and the family of Niza- mettin Çim, a Kurdish Muslim (center rear), whose grandfather helped shelter the Tas¸es from intolerance, offers a counterpoint to a history of ethnic tension in eastern Turkey, where the Armenian population was mostly killed or expelled during World War I. The Armenian and Turkish governments have yet to kindle such trust and amity. By Paul Salopek • Photographs by John Stanmeyer

One million Armenians—some say more, some say less—were killed a century ago in the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey.

A stone cenotaph in Yerevan, the capital of wall of pale stone protected it. Renowned as the Armenia, commemorates this tragic event: the “city of 1,001 churches,” Ani rivaled the glory of Medz Yeghern, or “great catastrophe,” of the Constantinople. It represented the flowering Armenian people. Each spring—on April 24, of Armenian culture. Today it crumbles atop a when the pogroms started—many thousands remote, sun-hammered plateau—a scattering of pilgrims climb an urban hill to this shrine. of broken cathedrals and empty streets amid They file past an eternal flame, the symbol of yellow grasses, a desolate and windblown ruin. I undying memory, to lay a small mountain of have walked to it. I am walking across the world. cut flowers. Just 60 miles to the northwest, and I am retracing, on foot, the pathways of the first a few hundred yards across the Turkish border, ancestors who abandoned Africa to wander the lie the ruins of an older and perhaps more fitting world. I have seen no place on my journey more monument to the bitterness of the Armenian beautiful or sadder than Ani. experience: Ani. “They don’t even mention the Armenians,” What is Ani? Ani was the medieval capital of marvels Murat Yazar, my Kurdish walking guide. a powerful, ethnically Armenian kingdom cen- And it is true: On the Turkish government tered in eastern Anatolia—the sprawling Asiatic placards erected for tourists, the builders of peninsula that today makes up most of Turkey— Ani go unnamed. This is intentional. There and straddling the northern branches of the Silk are no Armenians left in Ani. Not even in of- Road. It was a rich metropolis that hummed ficial histories. So just as Tsitsernakaberd hill with 100,000 souls. Its bazaars overflowed with in Yerevan calls to remember, Ani is a monu- furs, with spices, with precious metals. A high ment to forgetting.

112 national geographic • april 2016 Last year the Armenian Apostolic Church, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, made saints of all the victims of the genocide of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, the sprawling and multiethnic state that gave rise to modern Turkey. A veiled woman attends the canonization ceremony in Ejmiatsin, Armenia.

One of the oldest and most intractable po- is herding its young into the ﬁres. The vast and litical disputes in the world—a toxic standof multicultural Ottoman Empire—the world’s that has locked Armenia and Turkey in acri- most powerful Muslim polity—has allied itself mony, in enmity, in nationalist extremism for with Germany. A large Christian Armenian generations—can be reduced to the endless minority, once so peaceful and trusted as to parsing of three syllables: genocide. This word be labeled by the sultans as the millet-i sadı- is freighted with alternative meanings, with ka, or loyal nation, is wrongfully accused of shadings, with controversy. It is codiﬁed by the rebellion, of siding with the Russian enemy. United Nations as one of the worst of crimes: Some Ottoman leaders decide to resolve this the attempt to obliterate entire peoples or eth- “Armenian problem” through extermination nic, racial, or religious groups. And yet when and deportation. Soldiers and local Kurdish does it apply? How many must be slaughtered? militias shoot Armenian men. There are mass How to weigh action versus intent? By what rapes of women. Armenian villages and city ghastly accounting? neighborhoods are looted, appropriated. The The Armenian version of events: The year is dead clog the rivers and wells. Cities stink of 1915. World War I is nine months old. Europe rot. The survivors—ragged columns of women

Ghost lands 113 and children— straggle at bayonet point into the faced charges of denigrating Turkishness or waterless deserts of neighboring Syria. (Today the Turkish state. just three million Armenians live in Armenia; “It is our hope and belief,” then Prime Min- eight to ten million are scattered in diaspora.) ister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared in a care- The Armenian population in the Ottoman Em- fully worded speech in 2014, “that the peoples pire drops from about two million to fewer than of an ancient and unique geography, who share 500,000. Most historians call this subtraction similar customs and manners, will be able to the modern world’s first true genocide. talk to each other about the past with maturity “I am confident that the whole history of the and to remember together their losses in a de- human race contains no such horrible episode cent manner.” as this,” wrote Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the U.S. What is the special power of this word ambassador to Constantinople at the time. “The “genocide”? great massacres and persecutions of the past The Armenian diaspora has spent decades seem almost insignificant when compared with funding lobbying campaigns to urge the gov- the suferings of the Armenian race in 1915.” ernments of the world to deploy this term when Turkish authorities categorically deny this describing what occurred under the Ottomans.

A toxic standof that has locked Armenia and Turkey in nationalist extremism for generations can be reduced to the endless parsing of three syllables: genocide.

account. Their version of the “so-called geno- In Diyarbakır, a Kurdish city in eastern Tur- cide” goes like this: It is a time of supreme key, I am conducting an interview at a newly madness in history, a time of civil war. Arme- reopened Armenian church—a small, fragile nians suffer, it is true. But so do many other gesture of Turkish-Armenian conciliation— groups trapped inside the Ottoman Empire when a man strides up to me. as it splinters during the Great War: ethnic “Do you recognize the genocide?” he de- Greeks, Syriac Christians, Yazidis, Jews—even mands. He is Armenian. He is agitated. He peers the Turks themselves. Blood ﬂows in all direc- into my eyes. tions. There is no systematic extermination I am startled. I’m working, I tell him. plan. And the Armenian death tolls are exag- “I don’t care,” he says. “Do you or don’t you gerated, fewer than 600,000. Moreover, many recognize the genocide?” Armenians are in fact traitors: Thousands join I put down my pen. He repeats his question, the armed ranks of invading coreligionists, the over and over. He is telling me: I am not a ghost. imperial Russian Army. Challenging this official view still carries The question of memory: Never forget. But risks in Turkey. Though prosecutions have of course we do. Eventually we always forget. eased, Turkish judges deem the term “geno- “People have been making war for thousands cide” provocative, incendiary, insulting to the of years,” observed the Polish journalist and nation. When speaking of the Armenian calam- writer Ryszard Kapuściński, “but each time it is ity, even such luminaries as Orhan Pamuk, the as if it is the ﬁrst war ever waged, as if everyone Turkish novelist and Nobel Prize winner, have has started from scratch.”

114 national geographic • april 2016 Empires and Exile Planned route Caught between the collapsing Russian and AREA ENLARGED Ottoman Empires, the region then known as Completed the Armenian highlands—now eastern Anatolia— lost nearly all its Armenians within a dec ade of the start of World War I. Historians estimate that 500,000 to 1.5 million of them Paul Salopek’s 21,000-mile trek were killed or displaced in what Armenians traverses areas where long-ago events call a genocide, a claim rejected by Turkey. are a source of present-day tensions.

Paul Salopek’s walking route* RUSSIA Caspian C A U C A Political boundaries, 1915 S U Sea GEORGIA S Armenian population of at least M RUSSIAN O 12 percent, circa 1915** U EMPIRE N Tbilisi Nov. 11,T L E A Black Sea S S 2015 I Akhaltsikhe E R N

S C Samsun A Jardi Dzor U Trabzon AZERBAIJAN Giresun Gyumri C Merzifon Ani A ARMENIA S Oltu Yerevan 1994 Bagaran U cease-ire Ejmiatsin S line (Echmiatsin) Erzurum Yozgat Ağrı Sivas Erzincan Mt. Ararat AZERB. (Ağrı Dağı) 16,854 ft ANATOLIA Patnos 5,137 m NAGORNO- KARABAKH Kangal Taşkale TURKEY Muş Frozen Conﬂict Lake Van Kayseri Çalışırlar Van Ethnic Armenians have controlled Nagorno- Çüngüş Bitlis Karabakh since a 1994 Diyarbakır cease-ire between Adıyaman Siverek Batman Azerbaijani and Armenian es Oct. 6, 2014 forces. Azerbaijan still Pozantı at hr claims the disputed region. Eup Adana OTTOMAN Mersin T Mosul PERSIA i EMPIRE gr HATAY Aleppo is Musa Dağ SYRIA 4,446 ft Kirkuk 1,355 m Turning Point IRAQ Travel by boat Turks and Armenians lived together mainly peaceably for Medit. centuries. But in 1914 Turk nation- Sea Homs alists sided with Germany and began to fear Armenian collusion IRAN with the Russian Empire. LEBANON

0 mi 100

0 km 100 *TO REPORT THIS STORY, SALOPEK MADE A SIDE TRIP TO ARMENIA AND NAGORNO-KARABAKH. **OUTLINE FOLLOWS ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES WITHIN THE OTTOMAN AND RUSSIAN EMPIRES.

LAUREN C. TIERNEY, NGM STAFF. SOURCES: OTTOMAN EMPIRE 1914 CENSUS FIGURES (BY RELIGION); RUSSIAN EMPIRE 1897 CENSUS FIGURES (BY LANGUAGE) On April 24, 2015, the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of a mass slaughter that many historians label the irst genocide of the modern era, crowds join a torchlight procession through the Armenian capital of Yerevan to honor the dead. During the annual commemoration, part somber memorial and part nationalist rally, the grieving can turn overtly political—participants sometimes burn Turkish ags. Nektar Alatuzyan, 102, was a year old when the massacres and deportations of Armenians began in Turkey. Her family, rescued from a coastal mountain in southern Turkey by a French warship, escaped to Egypt; in 1947 she, her husband, and their children settled in Armenia. The last eyewitnesses of what Armenians call Medz Yeghern—the “great catastrophe”—are deemed living treasures in Armenia. A dwindling few remain to tell their families’ stories. In a town outside of Yerevan a shrunken old bananas now! I want to keep the memory man slumps on a couch. His name is Khosrov of those bananas!” Frangyan’s middle-aged Frangyan. He is bundled against the nonexis- daughter shakes her head. She apologizes. tent cold—in blankets, in a pile jacket, in a knit The old man gets confused, she says. But he cap, with socks pulled over his gnarled hands— is not confused. I have been to his homeland because his heart and veins are antique. He is in Hatay Province, Turkey. I have stood near 105 years old. He is one of the last living sur- his old village amid orchards lush with tan- vivors of the Armenian massacres. These frail gerines and lemons. It is indeed a subtropi- elders, now mostly gone, are cherished as na- cal paradise. And I have peered from a hilltop tional heroes in Armenia. Because they are the overlooking the same blue sea where the war- last palpable links to the crime of 1915. Because ships dropped anchor. His chance salvation they are a breathing rebuke to denial. They reminded me, unreassuringly, of the conclu- have repeated their stories so many times that sion to that novel of human evil Lord of the their delivery seems dry, remote, rote—worn as Flies: How adults ﬁnally splashed ashore on a smooth as well-rubbed coins. remote island of innocent, castaway children— “I was ﬁve when the Turks came,” Frangyan children who had devolved, unsupervised, into

When does a genocide oicially end? At which point is the act of mass annihilation complete—ﬁnished, documented, resolved?

rasps. “They chased us up the mountain.” murderers—to save the day. He recounts his story in shards. It is a fabled A century ago the French Navy rescued incident from the genocide. Some 4,700 resi- Frangyan and his family. But who will save the dents of six Armenian villages in what is now French sailors from human darkness? And who southern Turkey fled up a coastal mountain will rescue the rest of us? called Musa Dağ. They rolled rocks down on their Turkish pursuers. They held out for more I walk out of Africa. I follow the footsteps of than 40 days. The desperate survivors waved our Stone Age ancestors. Wherever these pio- a handmade banner at ships steaming past neers appeared, other resident hominins dis- along the Mediterranean shore. “CHRISTIANS appeared. They vanished. IN DISTRESS— RESCUE.” By some miracle French In eastern Turkey I walk by derelict Arme- warships saved them and carried them off to nian farmhouses. Trees sprout from their Egypt, to exile. rubble, their rooﬂess rooms. I walk past old Ar- Frangyan’s brown eyes are watery and red menian churches converted to mosques. I sit in rimmed. He does not dwell, as some Armenian the mottled shade of walnut orchards planted witnesses do, on the horrors, on the summary by the long-ago victims of death marches. executions of parents in front yards, on mass “We fought the Armenians, and many died,” rapes, on decapitations. No. His voice rises as says Saleh Emre, the gruf, white-haired may- he recalls instead the fruits of his lost village: or of the Kurdish village of Taşkale. He sud- “The gardens! My grandfather had ﬁgs—each denly softens. “I think this was wrong. They tree was 50 meters high! I want to eat those belonged here.”

120 national geographic • april 2016 Mount Ararat, a powerful symbol of Armenian identity, looms over children at play in eastern Turkey. Redrawn borders after World War I left it inside Turkey, to the dismay of Armenians. Today Ararat is a ixture of Yerevan’s southern skyline—seemingly so close, yet locked beyond a border shut by controversy, pain, and history.

Muslim Kurds occupy a strange place in complete— finished, documented, resolved? the violent history of eastern Turkey. From a Surely not when the gunﬁre stops. (This is far frontier gendarmerie who did the Ottomans’ too soon.) Is it when the individual dead dis- dirty work a century ago, they have become appear from the chain of human memory? Or a besieged ethnic minority, demanding more when the last emptied village acquires a new political rights in modern Turkey. Victimhood population, a new language, a new name? Or is now binds many Kurds to their long-departed it sealed, at long last, with the onset of regret? Armenian neighbors. My guide, Murat Yazar, and I inch north- Emre says his family acquired the land for his ward. We trek across yellowing steppes where village from Armenians. It came very cheap. He wolves run before us, pausing to gaze back over lets this fact sink in. He ticks of the names of their shoulders in silence, then trot on. We pass nearby towns that once were majority Arme- Mount Ararat. The 16,854-foot peak shines to nian: Van, Patnos, Ağrı. Few or no Armenians the east, smeared white with snow. The Bible live in them now. links the mountain to Noah’s high-altitude When does a genocide officially end? At anchorage. The beautiful volcano is sacred which point is the act of mass annihilation to the Armenians. (A popular misconception

Ghost lands 121 The archways of the crumbling Surp (Saint) Garabed Church in Çüngüs¸, eastern Turkey, hint at the former heights of Armenian culture here. Many old churches have fallen to ruins or been converted into mosques in the former Armenian heartland. But grassroots attempts at reconciliation, often led by Turkey’s minority Kurds, have also helped rebuild one of the largest Armenian churches in the Middle East, in the city of Diyarbakır. Arif Oruç (far right) and his Armenian family, who are Muslim, live a prosperous life near Batman, Turkey. A century ago thousands of Armenians converted to Islam to save their lives—or became Muslims as orphaned children adopted by Turkish and Kurdish families. As the debate over what to call the massacres of Armenians becomes a topic of more broad-minded discussion in Turkey, descendants of “hidden Armenians” are grappling with their past for the irst time. has it that Armenian Apostolic priests even But demand what? wear caps shaped like Ararat’s cone.) In Au- This is the key question that Armenians are gust 1834 the Russian meteorologist Kozma asking themselves. Is the past a guide? Or is it Spassky-Avtonomov climbed to the moun- a trap? tain’s icy summit. Ararat towers so high that Apostolic Bishop Mikael Ajapahian, of the he thought he might see stars twinkling during Armenian city of Gyumri: “In Armenia there the daytime. His expedition was the perfect is no enmity toward Turkey. We hold nothing Anatolian quest: He was trying to discern what against ordinary Turks. But Turkey must do is always there yet invisible. This is a landscape everything—everything—to heal the wounds.” haunted by absences. Elvira Meliksetyan, women’s rights activist: “We don’t know what we want. If everything “Chosen trauma” is how the political psychol- reminds us of our past burdens, then we lose the ogist Vamık Volkan describes an ideology—a future, no? We have no strategy. All this victim- worldview—by which grief becomes a core of ization makes us beggars.” identity. It applies to entire nations as well as Ruben Vardanyan, billionaire philanthropist: individuals. Chosen trauma unifies societies “A hundred years later we are the winners. We

‘If everything reminds us of our past burdens, then we lose the future, no? All this victimization makes us beggars.’ Elvira Meliksetyan, women’s rights activist

brutalized by mass violence. But it also can survived. We are strong. So saying thank you, stoke an inward-looking nationalism. giving back something to the people who saved I slog across the Lesser Caucasus Moun- us, including Turks, is the next step. A hundred tains from Turkey into the republic of Georgia. years ago some of their grandparents saved our I throw stones to knock frozen apples from bare grandparents. We need to connect those stories.” trees. Pausing in Tbilisi, I ride a night train to (Vardanyan has funded an award, the Aurora Yerevan. It is April 24, the hundredth anniver- Prize, to honor unsung heroes who rescue others sary of the Armenian genocide. from genocide.) Billboards festoon the Armenian capi- There is a torchlight march. There are photo tal. One shows weapons—a scimitar, a riﬂe, a exhibits. There is a concert by an Armenian- hatchet, a noose—arrayed to spell out “1915.” diaspora rock band from Los Angeles. (“This is Another bluntly pairs an Ottoman fez and not a rock-and-roll concert! To our murderers, “Turkish” handlebar mustache with Adolf Hit- this is revenge!”) The Tsitsernakaberd with its ler’s brush mustache and comb-over. The least eternal flame—the hilltop monument to the combative symbol of mourning is the most poi- dead—is crowded with diplomats, academ- gnant: forget-me-not ﬂowers. Millions of violet ics, activists, ordinary people. At a genocide- petals brighten Yerevan’s parks and medians. prevention conference, an American historian The corollas are reproduced on banners, on dryly lays out the case for Turkish reparations. stickers, on lapel pins: a blossom of genocide. It is “not an absurd or immaterial proposition,” “I remember and demand”—this is the slogan he suggests, for Turkey to cede the six tradi- of the commemoration. tionally Armenian provinces of the Ottomans

126 national geographic • april 2016 to Armenia. (Germany has paid more than $70 The closed Armenia-Turkey border is one of billion in compensation to the victims of Nazi the strangest boundaries in the world. Turkey atrocities.) shut its land crossings in 1993 out of sympathy The most wrenching story I hear on my Ar- with Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. menia side trip comes from a young man with The Armenian side also remains sealed, owing eyes like open manholes. in part to pressure from the diaspora against “I was just a baby, maybe one year old. I was normalizing relations with Turkey. The re- dying in the hospital. I had pneumonia—I think sult: Roads traversing a storied intersection of it was pneumonia. The doctors could do noth- the globe—a fulcrum point between Asia and ing. A Turkish woman in the maternity ward Europe— go nowhere. A train station on the Ar- noticed my mother crying. She asked my moth- menian side has not seen a locomotive pass in er if she could hold me. She unbuttoned her 22 years. A sleepy clerk sweeps the station oice dress. She took me by my ankles and lowered once a day while the rails silently rot. (A ghost me down the front of her body. It was like she airline does fly direct between Armenia and was giving birth to me all over again. She did Turkey; it operates from a nondescript oice this seven times. She said prayers. She shouted, in Yerevan.) As a result, the economies of both ‘Let this child live!’ ” countries sufer. People on both sides of the line And? are cut of, isolated, poorer. “I got better.” He shrugs. “The Turk saved The Russian Army guards the Armenian side my life.” of the border with Turkey as part of a mutual- Ara Kemalyan, an ethnic Armenian soldier, defense pact. This is how Moscow maintains tells me that story inside a frontline trench influence in the strategic region. The sight is about 150 miles southeast of Yerevan. There surreal: Strands of Armenian barbed wire, Rus- are pocks of distant gunfire. A dusty white sun. sian watch towers, and checkpoints face open Rusty cans hang on barbed wire—a primitive fields in Turkey, which demilitarized its side of alarm system against infiltrators. For more the border many years ago. Russian and Arme- than 20 of his 38 years Kemalyan, a fighter from nian troops face of against Turkish shepherds. the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, The shepherds wave. has been squared of against soldiers—his for- “I always keep my kitchen fire lit,” says Va- mer friends and neighbors—from the central han dukht Vardanyan, a rosy-cheeked Armenian government of Azerbaijan, a secular Muslim woman whose farmhouse sits across the barbed state. Up to 30,000 people, mostly civilians wire from Ani. “I want to show the Turks that on both sides, have died in the violence over we’re still here.” Nagorno-Karabakh since the late 1980s, and I climb an overlook by her home where Ar- hundreds of thousands have been displaced. menian pilgrims disembark from buses. These This poisonous little war, paralyzing the Cau- tourists come to gaze longingly across a fence casus, has virtually nothing to do with the older at their ancient capital in Anatolia. I look too. violence under the Ottomans. Yet Kemalyan I see exactly where I stood months earlier in still dubs the woman in the hospital, the Azer- Turkey. A ghost of my earlier self roams those baijani midwife who saved him with magic, an ruins. Nothing separates any of us except an enemy “Turk.” The specters of 1915 have occu- immense gulf of loneliness. j pied his heart. Follow National Geographic Fellow }efore walking out of these ghost lands, I Paul Salopek on his seven-year walk around the world at national revisit Ani. The medieval ruin in Turkey. The geographic.com/edenwalk, where monument to denial. This time I see it from the he posts personal dispatches and Armenian side of the frontier. photographs from his journey. MATTHIEU CHAZAL Ghost lands 127 Pastoralists in southeastern Turkey push sheep into pastures that have known the calls of Kurdish, Armenian, Arab, and Turkish shepherds. The Ottoman Empire, a patchwork of ethnicities and once a great cultural entrepôt, combusted during World War I in the ames of ultranationalism. Today tens of thousands of Armenians live openly in Turkey—a tiny number compared with the three million in Armenia and the estimated eight to ten million in the global diaspora. Picnicking at night beneath apricot trees—and a giant cross shining deiantly into Turkey—villagers in the border town of Bagaran, Armenia, belt out songs of memory, cultural endurance, and survival. The bitter dispute between Armenia and Turkey dating back four generations has paralyzed economic, diplomatic, and political progress in the region. The ancient crossroads between Turkey’s eastern highlands and the Caucasus remains in the thrall of ghosts. There’s no place like home. African landscapes, remote 93 Days In life and in photography, groups of indigenous people, a closer look at the familiar lively street scenes in Paris. can often reveal truth and But sometimes the most re- of Spring beauty. This series of 93 days vealing photographs are of the of spring in my home state of places we know best. When Story and Photographs by Minnesota is no exception. you shoot an area you know in JIM BRANDENBURG Shooting locally may seem your bones, as I do the North counterintuitive to some. Woods and prairies of Minne- Cameras seek the exotic, sota, it touches on something and for good reason—novelty primal. Familiarity and inti- is inspiring. As a National mate knowledge of the subject Geographic photographer come to light and manifest for more than three decades, themselves in the frame. I’ve made millions of images I was born in the south- in far-flung places—majestic western part of the state—a

132 PROOF A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL | proof.nationalgeographic.com

near-transcendental experi- to uncomfortable heights. ence for me. Each image Record highs and lows have I make feels like a prayer ranged a full 140 degrees. flag I’ve hung out to the I took these photos in universe—a celebration the state’s four main ecolog- of nature’s wonder. I hope ical zones: tallgrass aspen some of that is revealed here. parkland, prairie grassland, I’m drawn to limitations. deciduous forest, and conifer- So when I started this series, ous forest. Many of the images I thought I’d shoot it the same have a strong narrative. For way as an earlier one: by re- instance, I’d been watching stricting myself to one image an eagle nest for five years but a day, simply and minimally. had never photographed it. I would shoot like a Japanese Then on day 50, on my way to Zen master calligrapher who finally shoot it, I saw an eagle observes a sheet of paper, floating in a pond nearby. then makes one simple ges- It had been hit by a car. My ture. And I’d make each image heart broke as I watched it at exactly noon. As photogra- TALLGRASS ASPEN PARKLAND phers know, noon light is the worst light of the day—a time to put away the camera and CONIFEROUS take a nap. FOREST But after two weeks my MINNESOTA self-imposed limit began to U.S. ON BIRCH TREE BUTTERFLY SWALLOWTAIL | feel artificial, even cruel. I was missing precious light PRAIRIE DECIDUOUS DAY 84 DAY and moments. So I decided to GRASSLAND FOREST shoot in a more joyous way, driven by aesthetics rather hang its head and die in the than the clock. water. The next shot (day 51) flat, featureless landscape Most of these photographs shows the eagle’s mate wait- dominated by corn and soy- were intuitive and unplanned. ing in vain near their nest. It bean fields. It’s not exactly a Sometimes I’d see a subject waited for days. location brimming with com- and say, This orchid isn’t Other frames record hap- pelling imagery. But learning quite in full bloom, I’ll come pier experiences. Days 91 and to make photographs on the back later. But spontaneity 93 were made at Touch the prairie may have been a bless- was the standard. Sky Prairie—a thousand- ing for me: I was weaned on This project began on the acre preserve I established looking carefully. The visual 2014 vernal equinox and end- in 2002. It’s one of the few language I employ today—my ed on the day before summer large unplowed pieces of land photographic voice—was born solstice. Minnesota weather in the region. I was born on in this minimal landscape of can vary greatly in spring. a farm just a mile away, and “fly-over country.” When the season begins, I made some of my very first Like the two other there’s deep snow in the north photographs there when I season-specific series I’ve and temperatures are as low was 14. I’ve come full circle. produced, this one has been a as -30°F. Then it climbs, often I’ve come home again. j

NGM MAPS. SOURCE: MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES

In the Loupe With Bill Bonner, National Geographic Archivist

Frontier Memories It is 1890. The town of Mason, Texas—once a frontier outpost contested by settlers and Native American tribes—has become a thriving ranch community. This day, clearly, was one to preserve for posterity. Although the photographer of this particular shot is unknown, its collector is famed. Noah Hamilton Rose (1874-1952) was a chronicler of the Old West. He collected thousands of images, from scofaws and brigands to the townsfolk of Mason and other frontier hamlets on the cusp of the 20th century. On this particular day, the people of Mason gathered to pose, their faces peering up at a distant lens. Perhaps it was a big news day: After all, perched atop the building housing the Mason News (inset) is a brave soul, waving a newspaper. He tips his hat, in honor of events now long forgotten. —Eve Conant

PHOTO: NOAH HAMILTON ROSE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

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